Well I suspect if I was in China the answer i'm about to post would be erased within minutes! It's a good job i'm not then I guess!

As an internet junkie the thought of someone policing relatively ordinary content just appalls me, to be honest. There are thought to be around 30,000 Internet Police in China and that combined with other government staff, ISP's and censorship systems means that content is typically erased within minutes, often without human intervention.

It's a fact according to Amnesty international that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.”

Since December 11, 1997 Chinese law has stated:

No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:

1. Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations;
2. Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
3. Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;
4. Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities;
5. Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;
6. Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder;
7. Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people;
8. Injuring the reputation of state organs;
9. Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.

I'm personally against most form of government interference, I even get agitated by the way the UK government is but the way the Chinese government treats its citizens on censorship would be challenging beyond descriptions.

I agree with some aspects of censorship, e.g. paedophilia or racial hatred websites but to mass censor just seems wrong to me.

I hope this will change in time and that similar victories for democracy can be witnessed as happened in South Africa with Nelson Mandela,.

Well here's hoping.
Source(s):
Wikipedia


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