NYTimes | BBC | Meta: CNN via YouTube
Surprise, surprise, it’s over the “T” word. I don’t want politics to interrupt the spazzy fun, but since this concerns two of my favorite things in the world, I thought I’d take a moment. The gist of the story is that Google noticed a few days ago YouTube access from China sharply dropped, and they discovered the site is no longer working in the region. News networks are speculating it is due to a recently upload video of police assaulting protesters during a riot. The Chinese government has come out with a statement saying that supporters of the Tibetan movement doctored video to “deceive the international community” and that “China is not afraid of the Internet.”
Okay, I guess I’ve been living under a rock, because I was always under the impression that YouTube is permanently defunct in China. Not so apparently, since this is the first time in a while that the Chinese government has issued a block.
No matter where you stand on Tibet, and the international media’s reporting of Chinese affairs, I hope people see that this level of censorship, if indeed this is what happened, isn’t appropriate. IMO the Chinese government is doing their cause a disservice because they’ve only drawn attention to something that otherwise may have gone unnoticed.
Believe me when I say this, people in China are not stupid, and they certainly are not ignorant. If someone as computer illiterate as me knows how to use a proxy, you can bet that netizens of the new China knows how to get information despite the governments best attempts. I don’t know how exactly the general public there feels on issues such as Tibet or censorship. However, I would guess that the people there, especially those a part of the Internet culture, are a whole lot less Commie, and a whole lot more open-minded then America makes them out to be.
The point is, fighting against a medium as fluid and dynamic as the Internet is a losing battle, and at this point China really can’t have it both ways. If they want to be considered a modern world power, having a strong Internet presence is a must. However, the trade-off is that they have to give up some control over people’s access to information. That’s not a moral statement, it’s a pragmatic one. The government is fighting a battle they can’t win. Net culture is only going to get bigger in China, and blocking websites like YouTube is not going to do anything except bring more negative attention to themselves.
