Comments on: China To Bloggers: Stop Talking Now. K Thanks Bye.

By: SBP Romania

SBP Romania — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Interesting subject, i’ll be looking forward to your next post. My opinion is that Internet can be controlled, only when people can be controlled, and in China this is the case.

By: Rollo

Rollo — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:18:00 +0000

The example of China suggests that the internet is indeed fundamentally controllable. But the experience of the Western content industries suggests the opposite: hackers invent technical workarounds which are then democratized to the masses. The workarounds and the democratization always have a political flavor. So perhaps it’s about expectatations. The internet can only be controlled if its citizens have that expectation.

By: William J Brown

William J Brown — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 01:22:00 +0000

So, if anyone in the “West” needed reminding, China is still very, very much a totalitarian state. While it tolerates — and indeed depends upon — elements of free market capitalism to enable it to create sufficient economic opportunity for its vast population, it does so while balanced by the often brutal fist of intimidation, coercion and torture. China’s ruling leadership walks the edge of a razor blade – embrace free market reforms, but at considerable peril, as the population increasingly wants “more”. This episode demonstrates, however that the State will immediately and without hesitation move to crush anything that threatens its control. Yet, at the same time, the Bo episode points to the patent depravity in practice among many of the ruling Communist Party’s highest elite. Simply read allegations discussed in the NYT and WSJ about Bo’s brand of “rule”. Somehow, it does not seem possible for China to continue to paint the portrait of a growing yet tranquil domestic political and economic paradise. It seems certain that more and more of these episodes are likely as the realities of slowing economic growth collide with a broken form of 20th Century totalitarian government.