It seems to be the official line in China that the Internet is not so much censored as it is filtered of potentially dangerous or illegal content. For the large majority of Chinese this poses no problems and to an extent is even seen as legitimate and unavoidable. Anyway, the large majority of Chinese enjoy an ever growing array of domestic content tucked snugly on the red side of the Great Fire Wall.
Now with China’s opening up and the ever growing influence of English on China’s youth more young Chinese are turning on to sites like Blogger, Flickr and Wikipedia. But it seems the censorship is seemingly pointlessly extending to such foreign mainstream and politically benign sites. Now of-course this is China so predictably domestic companies have been quick to clone foreign blogging and social networking giants, but they lack one thing, the global diversity that the Nu China Youth crave.
From The New York Times:
Great Firewall of China Faces Online Rebels…
…In recent months, China’s censors have tightened controls over the Internet, often blacking out sites that had no discernible political content. In the process, they have fostered a backlash, as many people who previously had little interest in politics have become active in resisting the controls.
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