From Global Voices Online:
There are many counties in China. To have never heard of a certain country is of course nothing strange. Shanxi‘s Fangshan county, for example, which I’ve never heard of. But recently this county’s Party Committee Secretary Zhang Guobiao has come up with a new iron ricebowl-type policy which, under the camouflage of protecting minors and students will close all internet bars in the entire county, interfering with business people’s freedom to do business as well as people’s freedom to understand information. This is even being praised by many people, the biggest joke ever.
There has been no shortage of those who would rather starve than run the risk of choking in Chinese history, people who stick with the old ways. When the Qing Dynasty government was preparing to buy back the Shanghai-Wusong railway, it was planning to tear it up. It’s like China only introduced the internet so that it could block it, in today’s scandal in which Fangshan country closed all its internet bars as with Chibi city in Hubei province who once closed their internet bars as well. But have we ever thought? Other countries have the internet too, and how do they deal with it? Did they go and make a filter for sensitive terms?…[Full Text]
