From Reuters:
The Internet in China is not as restricted as sometimes believed in the West, with most controls actually coming from sites practising self-censorship, an academic who studies the Chinese Web said on Thursday.
But the government has also effectively stopped online dissent, defying expectations that the Communist Party would never survive broadband, said Rebecca MacKinnon, assistant professor of new media at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre.
Although MacKinnon added there was no doubt the government could crack down hard when it wanted to, pointing to the example of people jailed for expressing their opinions online, she said it was important to keep it in perspective. [Full Text]
