Metaposting
So I’m a pessimist. My first thought upon being invited to post here was: It’s pretty, but will we actually be able to access this blog from China? Though we’re not planning on raising the hackles of any government censors with this project, preliminary trials have been inconclusive. (That is, one friend of Joe’s in China was able to post a comment and one wasn’t.)
You see, my knowledge of blogging in China is mainly derived from reports in Western mainstream media, which, not surprisingly, tends to focus on restrictions of internet freedom. I’ve heard from journalists covering China that there are only a few stories that get told in US media, and this is certainly one of them. But, of course, many bloggers in China — as elsewhere — don’t cover politics at all. And accordingly, they’re tired of being portrayed as victims of censorship, of being asked whether blogging will lead to the Party’s downfall. In their view, the internet’s not changing China. Rather, China’s changing the intenet.
But restrictions are undeniably real, and perhaps tightening. According to a Dec. 12th article at the People’s Daily Online, “The Internet Society of China (ISC) confirmed the government was considering requiring Internet users to provide their real names and identification card numbers before they could open a blog or post online comments.” The new requirements would not be significantly different from previous proposals, which have consistently met with anger from commercial media and Internet users.
Meanwhile, by all accounts, blogging is growing explosively in China. Rebecca MacKinnon of globalvoicesonline.org, reports that the country “has somewhere between 15-30 million bloggers depending on whose count you believe,” while the ISC (which should know) estimates that as of early November, there were 75 million blog readers.
Sure, we probably won’t have any problems accessing this blog. But there is a distinct possibility we’ll find ourselves confronting the Great Firewall of China at some point. Stay tuned.
Nora
December 26, 2006 at 6:36 am
Looks like Bubs could learn a thing or two from Nora about blogging. A flawless execution of external links, one after another. I hope this comment goes through the Great Firewall.