Things You Cannot Say on China’s Internet
nytimes.comI've always told my parents who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia that the Chinese communism is a very different beast from the eastern-bloc communism they've know (which Vaclav Havel described masterfully in his texts). But this article would feel very familiar to them.
It would be nice to see a table of the things one cannot legally say in different countries.
That would be fascinating.
Hm, I find it weird that it is forbidden to publish things that "publicize luxury life". I would dare to say that most Chinese popular TV series and movies do just that. (Be it in the ancient china period or in the present time)
I don't understand.
== Stereotyping alert ==
At least in Malaysia and Singapore, even though there are a lot of Chinese (but not China national), "China girls" (from China) carries negative connotation. The reason is, many of them work in brothels, dodgy massage parlors, etc (you get the idea), and they're also known to "steal people's husbands" and being "gold diggers".
In China itself, it's "common" for rich people to have mistresses, and prostitution seems to be "common" (I have few friends who regularly visit China for this purpose).
Is it _because_ of that the China govt puts censorship, or _despite_ of that, or totally unrelated?
Its totally unrelated. Like most issues with prostitution, it is simply caused by poverty.
China is a very materialistic society with incredibly high inequality and it lacks any sort of welfare support network.
If you just walk around in shanghai, then the country might seem pretty close to first world levels of development. But if you go deeper inland, you will find hundreds of millions rural people who have been left behind, and still live in grinding poverty.
When you are that poor, then becoming a prostitute can be a acceptable option for you.
I would imagine that people choose sex work even if they are not destitute.
For example, look at the American porn industry or "high-end" call girl/escort scene. Often, it seems, these women (and men) come from means, or at the very least, not squalor.
Poor sex workers are of course more open to exploitation, but you would still find sex workers in developed nations with high social welfare (Australia, for example).
Here in China, we are not to understand, we just accept, obey, and keep silent.
It's not because China girls (at least most of them) want to work in those places, sometimes there simply seems to be no other means. Too sad to continue, sorry.
People are going to be people, regardless of what a government does.
Those behaviours can be associated with a certain socio-cultural origin, but on the list of reasons I'd say "internet censorship" is down the list
I think gold diggers and prostitutes are a thing in practically every society or culture. "Outsiders" in most societies are also burdened with negative perceptions by the "insiders."
China is a huge country and we cannot generalise on any matter, except perhaps that history shows that vast nations crumble soon enough. Their very size seems to bring out inherent hurdles. This not just applies to China but all such similarly big countries... unless going forward we can evolve sufficiently to stave of death by a thousand paper cuts, but I'm not optimistic there...
The actual list as published by the China Netcasting Services Association on 2017-06-30:
Original: http://www.cnsa.cn/2017/06/30/ARTI0Qg4cp7jtd1Z5o0RnfzM170630...
English (via Google Translate): https://goo.gl/j7ii74
This is a quintessential example of not basing policy on evidence of harm. Any decision that affects others (such as policy) should be empirically-based, or risks being simply wrong/bad (as I would surmise it is, in this case).
I agree with the spirit of what you say, but I think those requirements are too stringent. It's very difficult to get evidence before-the-fact for a lot of public policy type issues.
I think it would be better to be seek out and take heed of evidence, but not block things because of lack of prior evidence. What you need to be able to do is experiment -- try out policies -- and gather evidence from that. This will lead to some number of failed policies but ought to lead to better overall outcomes in the long-run.
The problem with operating laws-as-experiments are that laws are extremely difficult to change, while actual experiments are not.
> It's very difficult to get evidence before-the-fact for a lot of public policy type issues.
Yeah, and this is exactly where I constantly see mistakes made and where I'd want some data or at least secular ethical rationality first, indicating at least a direction to take with policy. For example, treatment of sexual issues was terrible decades ago (and depending on where you are in the world, still is) due to lack of basing it on secular ethics ("who is actually harmed by this behavior? and in what capacity? and how much, by some objective measurement? and for how long?") or evidence ("wow, sure seems like a lot of animals are reproducing just fine despite having a percentage of gay members, maybe it's not so bad after all"). Or look at drug laws or prostitution laws- all based on big old dusty religious books or Victorian-era repressed sensibilities instead of rigorous data or secular ethical discussion.
You might argue that prostitution/oral sex (remember sodomy laws?) are an "affront to nature" instead of perhaps a "necessary evil," but without evidence as to actual objective harm (physical/emotional pain, long-term negatives, societal negatives at an institutional level, etc.), you should only be able to act in accordance with that by yourself and without being able to impose it on others.
In court, you cannot convict someone ("act against them and their interests") unless you prove harm has been done. Creating laws that curtail anyone's freedom should be treated equally.
I am 100% certain that China has absolutely NO good empirical basis to support their banning of 68 things off the Internet other than a flawed perception of reality.
I just wanted a list, not an article. :~(
One rule is to never click on "list" articles. Most of them are not worth your time.
And after reading the comments here, it is the case for this one too :-/
Although the title looks like it would led to a listicle, it doesn't. The article is a perfectly fine column about the issue at hand.
The thing with obedience (which is disgustingly praised by quite some HN commenters, maybe even not just astroturfers) is that it leaves zero territory to live your actual life.
Which then will create people living completely double lives, the obedient shell one and the other one.
Please don't post generic ideological tangents to HN. Much as we might wish otherwise, a public internet forum isn't able to have meaningful discussion about things like this. It just turns into boring slop.
Why have HN at all then? Let's close comments.
You can't discuss specific things if you never figured generic things out. We will have pointless discussions like "was is a good thing to murder this particular person, or you say it wasn't?"
We don't close comments because some comments are good. But some are boring, particularly the generic ones and the indignant ones. To make HN discussions better we need to make them less boring, i.e. less predictable.
Nobody figures generic things out. They're too generic for that. The true things you can say are trivial and the non-trivial things are untrue.
The grander and more general a topic, the fewer interesting things there are to say about it—especially in internet threads. Those few things get said over and over, making the threads predictable and boring. The solution is to avoid such tangents. To avoid a black hole, don't go near it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
> But some are boring
That's what you are thinking.
But you know what HN users think? They think +24.
Furthermore, those who would demand obedience because they lack substance aren't living a life either. That is, if living a life was sitting on a porch, they're in the swamps running from their past, without even knowing a porch exists.
It's a really shitty thing to be dragged into the swamp by someone who is lost in it. But to acknowledge it's just this shitty thing, nothing more, like cancer or falling down the stairs, that just hurt and diminished you for no good reason and for no real good outcome, which kept you from what is rightfully yours -- yourself -- that is step one. It's painful and can be paralyzingly scary, yet if people could see how scarier what they're regressing into is, how it's just a dead end filled with pain, in comparison to the soundness waiting beyond that small scary threshold, they'd take it in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, my first reaction to someone wanting to "sell" me abuse or obedience is anger. But it really should be compassion.. obedient and authoritarian people deserve better. Abused and abusive people deserve better. FWIW I didn't think much of China when I wrote this; people break in the same dozens of ways all over the world and all through history it seems. But compassion and giving it just one inch are still orthogonal, you have to balance between the feelings of those who are fucked up, and those they would hurt by virtue of being so.
You mean "obedience" in general or "obedience to the current Chinese government"?
In general, when somebody asks for your obedience and you comply, they proceed with adding conditions.
First it's "no outright porn" then "no naming of private parts" then "no blurring of line between good and evil".
You can imagine their conditions as an area, and your meaningful life as an area, and the Venn diagram of those two stops intersecting. You can't write "Crime and Punishment" without blurring line between good and evil. You can't write about any problems you are having. So now you are writing something banal, bland and unconvincing (as most of communist art is)
If you're talking about "obedience" in general though, then some equally valid examples of rules someone might ask you to obey would include "don't murder people" and "don't do drugs". "Obedience" is far too broad of a term for you to characterize it as outright good or bad entirely.
Following laws is not "obedience", as long as laws are reasonably consistent and universally enforced.
Also, "don't do drugs" is not usually a law, unless in repressive jurisdictions. You can't sell drugs and perhaps possess large quantities, but you can do drugs as an adult making choices.
Perhaps you could clarify what you mean when you say "obedience" then, because it seems to me that you and I have very different definitions of what that is.
Google defines obedience as:
> compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another's authority
So going by that definition, following the law is indeed "obedience". Similarly, complying with a court order would also be "obedience", as would pulling over to the side of the road when a police officer drives behind you with their lights and siren on, or listening to a lifeguard at a pool when they tell everyone to get out of the water.
In fact, if we're going by the dictionary definition of obedience, I would argue that obedience is necessary for the very existence of civilized society.
I mean trying to internalize other entity's commands as your own behaviour.
That's the idea behind Chinese "points for obedience" system, isn't it?
Following the law? Isn't that just "obeying the law"? (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/obedient)
I don't think being obedient and "trying to internalize other entity's command as your own behaviour" is the exact same thing (one might overlap - that I agree).
For example, I am obeying the law that disallow taking bribes all the time because nobody ever tries to bribe me.
I hope you don't laugh because that's exactly you are trying to convey.
No that doesn't work that way, and dictionary won't help you. For starters, you should understand the distinction between action and inaction.
Then you should take on personal borders topic.
Hmm... perhaps the term you're looking for is "blind obedience"? I don't think the word "obedience" on its own accurately describes what you're trying to convey.
No it's not "blind obedience", it's the opposite of that. It's trying to score points by showing obedience.
The article fails to list the 68 things...
Every time an article that is politically critical of one of US's rivals is posted on HN, there is a lot of incoming comments about how US is just as bad. Which is perfectly reasonable and commendable - most HN readers live in US, and a good citizen is more concerned with problems in his own country than elsewhere. But it makes me wonder, what kind of justifications will this article get.
> a good citizen is more concerned with problems in his own country than elsewhere.
In practical terms it's hard to be personally concerned equally as much about what happens in every country on earth, but as a matter of principle I think what happens to people is just as important regardless of where they are. And in our globalised world, what happens in one country, especially a major country, can have implications for many other countries.
> as a matter of principle I think what happens to people is just as important regardless of where they are
Important to whom?
To me, and obviously I think it is the appropriate attitude for others to have, too, but of course I'm not trying to force that on anyone.
So, your own well-being, as well as well-being of your closest relatives, is just as important as well-being of people on another side of the globe?
Clarification: I know that it's not what you meant. But if you answer "no" to this question (as any reasonable person would) then I can show that from that, it logically follows that well-being of people in your own country is more important to you - because those people can affect you and people close to you more than people on another side of the globe.
I think people are equally important.
But if you're asking specifically what I would do, well, the question you've posed is very abstract so it's hard to get clear what you're really asking.
What sorts of scenarios, where it's my close relatives vs people on the other side of the world, are you thinking of?
It's often not a zero-sum game, and often the popular perception of it in zero-sum terms is vastly overblown.
.
Regarding your clarification, I can not think of any scenario where I would want something done that would benefit my close relatives at the expense of people in other countries. I'm open to you suggesting some possible scenarios.
> It's often not a zero-sum game, and often the popular perception of it in zero-sum terms is vastly overblown.
It's never zero-sum, and it's never full cooperative either.
> I can not think of any scenario where I would want something done that would benefit my close relatives at the expense of people in other countries.
Imagine that your close relative loses a job, and his, hm... "standard of living" goes down X, while someone else on another side of the globe gets that job, and his standard of living goes up 2X. (It's not zero sum, yes). Would you be happy over such an outcome?
> Imagine that your close relative loses a job, and his, hm... "standard of living" goes down X, while someone else on another side of the globe gets that job, and his standard of living goes up 2X. (It's not zero sum, yes). Would you be happy over such an outcome?
Why did they lose their job? Is it because of freer trade? If was something like that then I would be ok, because I think that ultimately that's likely to make things better for everyone including the people in my country and including my relatives and descendants.
(and why does helping your relative out have to be at the expense of those other people overseas? Perhaps the best way to help them is for them to receive funding to get retrained to be more competitive in another area?)
I'm against the idea of blocking things with long-term gain, for the purposes of short-term gain.
And the number 69
Bigotry in XXI century. This is funny.
Why is western media so concerned about China when their own government ramped up their control over their own people ? And hackernews mostly westerners going ga ga over this. You should be concerned about what’s happening at your home than what’s happening in some other country. Stop policing the world.
There is a proverb, fix the dust in your eye before trying to fix the dirt in someone else’s.
Is our freedom of speech being censored online here? It's a good start that we can talk about this very subject.
Thats the only freedom you people have right now. It will be gone soon with the way your country is heading. Making it mandatory to reveal social media accounts for starters.
A country like China can protect its citizens from external propogandas. This propagandists include countries which are envious of the growth that China has achieved.
Brainwashing is where all evil begins. If you do not have the ability to think for yourself, and seek the opinions of others, you have nothing.
> when their own government ramped up their control over their own people
My solidarity with those resisting oppression is thicker than blood, while my loyalty to those who do not is more of an outer space kind of density. It's all the justification I need to speak freely about anything I see.
As for "proverbs", while we're picking cherries:
> Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Why is Nytimes so concerned about China while failing completely to put the spotlight on the burgeoning surveillance culture at home?
Who is going to talk about draconian surveillance, secret courts, secret orders, gag orders and government officials empowered to violate your dignity and privacy by searching your phone and personal effects. Why is Snowden still in Russia? Are we to pretend all this is not happening?
All this is left to the EFF. This is a kind of denial and posturing - oh look how bad they are while looking the other way at the growing authoritarianism at home.
Not even talking about the current censorship of alternative voices by Google, Facebook and others in support of mainstream media like the nyt with completely opaque and non transparent standards and lending credence to shadowy groups like propornot.
>Why is Nytimes so concerned about China while failing completely to put the spotlight on the burgeoning surveillance culture at home?
But the NYT reports on those issues all the time. You likely know about them precisely because of their articles.
>Who is going to talk about draconian surveillance, secret courts, secret orders, gag orders and government officials empowered to violate your dignity and privacy by searching your phone and personal effects. Why is Snowden still in Russia? Are we to pretend all this is not happening?
The NYT also reports on these all the time. In fact, it was the NYT that broke the story on surveillance programs like Stellar Wind in the mid-Bush era that laid the groundwork for Snowden's later revelations about the details of these programs.
This is hysterical nonsense. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about in the slightest.
> Why is Nytimes so concerned about China
It isn't. It's an article called "68 Things You Cannot Say on China’s Internet", out of many thousands of articles on the site. Naturally, that article will be about China: it is typical for an article to cover a specific topic.
One should not expect all articles a newspaper publishes to cover all criticisms of the government of the country in which that newspaper is incorporated. That's unreasonable.
> Who is going to talk about draconian surveillance, secret courts, secret orders, gag orders and government officials empowered to violate your dignity and privacy by searching your phone and personal effects.
A great many people. The New York Times, for example.
https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/surveillance-of-citize...
https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/foreign-intelligence-s...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/technology/aclu-border-pa...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/border-enforceme...
Even if you were right, wouldn't it be a great example of where the general direction of internet regulation in the West is headed?
Maybe it's related to why you felt the need to use a throwaway account to post your comment.
Because HN is actively policing "dangerous viewpoints" as well? Things are further down the rabbit hole than you may perceive you know.
If you mean the moderators of HN, I'm one and all I consciously care about is saving this site from sucking with tedium. So if anybody is "actively policing" HN, they have figured out how to hack my unconscious and I wish they'd share how they did it. That would actually be interesting.
The problem with tedium is that it's human nature for us all to care most about the sound of our voice and the sweet sweet beauty of our own words on the screen. We don't notice when we're repeating things that have been said millions of times because those lacked the flagship merit of it being me who was saying them.
This little me is the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It is the same in everyone and has nothing to do with pro- or anti-China, or pro- or anti-anything.
OBJECTION: Whataboutist Fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
In addition, making a claim from a fresh anonymous account conveys the message that you do not actually stand behind it, giving it zero credence.
First, please don't post this sort of boilerplate objection in HN threads. It's always the same and therefore boring.
Second, your comment crosses into personal attack, which is against the rules here. Please don't do that again.
I think I disagree that this is Whataboutism. I did not get the impression that the commenter was trying to "discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy" (from the wiki link), but rather that he/she was pointing out an instance of apparent double standards.
I could be wrong. He/she might be attempting to defend China's policies. It just didn't come across that way to me.
> In addition, making a claim from a fresh anonymous account conveys the message that you do not actually stand behind it, giving it zero credence.
Let me do it instead then:
Why is Nytimes so concerned about China while failing completely to put the spotlight on the burgeoning surveillance culture at home?
Who is going to talk about draconian surveillance, secret courts, secret orders, gag orders and government officials empowered to violate your dignity and privacy by searching your phone and personal effects. Why is Snowden still in Russia? Are we to pretend all this is not happening?
All this is left to the EFF. This is a kind of denial and posturing - oh look how bad they are while looking the other way at the growing authoritarianism at home. Not even talking about the current censorship of alternative voices by Google, Facebook and others in support of mainstream media like the nyt with completely opaque and non transparent standards and lending credence to shadowy groups like propornot.
I have an account created 1284 days ago and linked to keybase.io, is it credible now?
No, it's just as wrong and stupid. Repeating idiocy doesn't make it less idiotic.
throw2016's account is 474 days old and has a karma of 663 - that doesn't look like a "fresh anonymous account".
Because your government now wants all our social media accounts. They will decide whether I should be a tourist or a criminal when I land. Just wow !
What does an anonymous account have to do with anything? Whataboutism cannot be used to coverup hypocrisy and perpetuate denial.
China is using a hammer, we do it much more slyly, harassing journalists at airports, creating lists, hounding whistle-blowers, de-legitimizing alternate voices and idea, have in-effect erected a total surveillance state and empowered government agents to ruffle through our personal stuff. What more needs to be done?
These are huge transgressions against the democratic ideal that the NYT and mainstream media don't lose sleep over but apparently we need to distract ourselves with China. This is a kind of denial, there is no moral high ground to pull this kind of thing off.
The chinese have no illusion about their government, but we are happy to defend ours while they trample our rights. A totalitarian would prefer our way.