I have some questions for Chinese and China-based bloggers out there... assuming that a number of you are still reading this through proxy servers. Please forgive my rusty Chinese... I'm much better at reading than writing, I'm afraid.
The
extent of China's web filtering is often dismissed in the West as not
such a big deal because people can use proxies to get around the
blockages. People seem to have different opinions about how widespread the knowledge of proxies actually is in China. I'm not there right now. If you're in China right now or have been spending a lot of time there recently I'd like to know what you think about the following questions:
在国外经常有人说，因为有代理，中国有很多网站上不了没有太大关：真想看这些网站的人总有办法。不同的人对这个问题有不同的看法, 所以我想问中国的 blogger 几个问题:
- Of the people in China who use the internet regularly, what percentage do you think know how to use proxies? Of the people you know, what percentage know how to use proxies? 在中国经常上网的人当中，你估计百分之多少知道怎么用代理？亲自身边的人当中，你估计百分之多少会用代理？
- Out of that group of people, what percentage do you think frequently use proxies to access blocked sites? 会用代理的人当中， 你估计有百分之多少经常用代理上被封的网站？
- In other words, among the proxy-savvy Chinese internet users, to what extent does it matter if things are blocked or not? How much does filtering impact these people's information experience on the internet? 换句话问：在会用代理的中国网民当中，一些网站被封不封有多大的关系？中国政 府封一堆网站对中国 网民的“网上经验” 有多大的影响？
- More generally, amongst all internet users in China at large, how do you think internet blocking and filtering impacts what Chinese internet users do and do not know about their own country and about the world at large? 总的来说，在中国国内访问不了很多网站的情况之下，你觉得这个情况怎么影响 到中国网民对自己的国家和国外的理解？
I'd love to know your views. If you want to answer this on your own blog, please post the link in the comments section here if the trackback doesn't show up automatically. I would especially love to know what the Chinese bloggers think about this question. 麻烦blogger们在自己的 blog 上,或者在下面的“comments” 里面发表自己的意见!
(Also cross-posting this at Global Voices.)
Hi Rebecca,
Great site and great effort! I've been back in China for over a year and just recently started blogging. Here are some random thoughts. I'm asking a few local programmer friends to get some more numbers:
1. My sense is that Chinese Internet users don't access foreign sites (blocked or not) that much. People use the internet for games, downloads, entertainment news, etc. I've been doing some freelancing work for a search engine based here. So far I haven't seen any search terms for foreign-based media.
2. Most of the foreign media sites are not blocked: nytimes.com, cnn.com, etc.
3. I think most programmers, if they want to access blocked sites, they know how to use proxies. The casual users I'm not sure. I doubt they know how to or need to. I only started using proxy since I started blogging. I learned how to do it from my bro-in-law who's a programmer in Shanghi.
4. I don't think Internet blocking materially affect people's view on the outside world. The availability of print and online media is becoming very diverse very fast in China. When a Chinese person is bombarded everyday by state-controlled media, it's hard to imagine his/her view would be swayed in any way by foreign media, especially those in English.
5. Chinese is a very patriotic (whatever that means) people, government manipulation or not. Their views sometimes are more extreme than the government, I think, as in whether to use force against Taiwan and opinions about Japan. I don't think they would actively seek opinions directly contradicting what they hear in China. Of course, China is a big country, and there are students and artists and professionals who seek out diverse voices. But I believe they are a small minority.
Just my 2 cents. Hope it helps.
chinafool
Posted by: chinafool | July 02, 2005 at 10:37 PM
Rebecca,
Question 1: very few. If you put a gun on my head, I'll say 1-2%.
Question 2: high. 30-50%.
Question 4: basically I agree with the above commenter. The best way to examine this issue is to see to what extent people in Guangzhou, who can watch Hong Kong TVs, differ with people in other provinces in their views. I'm sure there will be differences, but they are probably not significant. You may say that internet is different from Hong Kong TVs. Yes, but most people in China would not read English web sites (whether they understand English or not). Secondly, Chinese language web sites outside China are mostly of poor quality.
I'm a Chinese graduate student in the US, and my last visit back to China was one year ago, so really I'm not a good source for you. But I doubt how many real Chinese bloggers will come here, so I would still give my two cents above.
Your research question is very interesting, but frankly I think internet is probably not a good place for surveys, plus the sample of respondents for this survey will most likely be small.
Posted by: Ranc | July 03, 2005 at 12:57 AM
Hi, I'm currently in China and reading through a proxy. I don't know whether this comment will be accepted or not, but I'll try. Right now, I'm in a Chinese friend's flat, and I'm using his computer, so I'd better be very careful about what I write. I asked your questions to the two friends of mine who are here. Both of them blog in Chinese.
Their answers were:
1. They don't know how to use a proxy. They don't know any Chinese people who know how to use a proxy. (In fact, I had to explain the concept of a proxy to them.) They were not computing majors, but they both took several computer courses at university.
My own personal answer is: the expats in China use proxies. The vast majority of Chinese users (99.99%) don't.
2. They don't.
3.&4. My friends think that the fact that the internet is blocked or filtered does impact a little bit on what they know about China and the world. They are sometimes surprised by just how much information the expats can find that they can't. However, in general they don't really mind that some websites are blocked. They just use the internet to do the things they're interested in (contact friends, play games, watch movies, cheat on exams etc) and presume that any website that is blocked is blocked because the government doesn't want them to read it. They're not very curious about what may or may not be on those pages.
Posted by: dishuiguanyin | July 03, 2005 at 07:41 AM
chinafool is a shameless cheater.
2. Most of the foreign media sites are not blocked: nytimes.com,
cnn.com, etc.
Is it true? How do you define "most"? How about BBC? How about
Washinton Post etc? Is nytimes.com really not blocked?
Do you know how they implement the dynamic blocking trick?
Rebecca, and most western people, don't be fooled by the CCP
government and minions like chinafool (I'm amazed to see him
using such a suitable name).
If you want to know more, please google:金盾工程
It has been a long time since they adopted a powerful filtering
and blocking scheme as "dynamic content-based blocking". Now
they set the monitoring software to screen the data flow. If
certain words in the black list matched, the connection is cut
off and the server IP blocked for certain period of time. That's
enough to stop the ordinary people get access to sensitive
information. Most people will get annoyed and just abandon
trying again. This scheme of blocking has several merits:
a. The websites that the CCP fears the people to see is a endless
list. However powerful their firewall machine can be, it's
theoretically impossible for them to maintain an endless
blacklist of websites while keep the internet run efficiently.
So the experts proposed a dynamic blocking scheme.
b. If the CCP blocks simply the IP of certain website, just like
how they did years ago when first blocking sourceforge.net for
the freenet project hosted there, the majority of political-
ignorant people were irritated and because they felt they wanted
to access "non-political" sites, they dare (in a self-cheating
sense) to speak out to protest against the government. This in
fact impaired the governmental authority. So they devised a
dynamic blocking scheme to block only certain URL when certain
words in a limited blacklist is matched, and only for a temporary
time. After that, the block is released automatically. This can
also cheat the innocent people and argue with those reporters
about the blocking issue that "You're lying! You said xxx site
is blocked?! But I can access it now! See it on my browser...".
It's a very common tricky waste of time to defeat the liberal
reporters.
c. The dynamic temporary blocking scheme can also isolate the
keen political liberalists, anti-government principals from the
ordinary selfish people. Since the majority "chinafool" kind of
people are selfish and ignorant of the principle of political
rights and the importance of freedom of speech, provided that
they can access the websites they like, they will ignore the
trample of rights of the other (minor group of) people. Even
more, when their need to access certain website is blocked by the
CCP government because of some political expressions of minor
groups, they will (and in fact they really did) actively
cooperate with the CCP government to drive off these
disobedients, or further persecute them even more severely than
the CCP. It's a common human vice.
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 10:37 AM
chinafool is a shameless cheater.
2. Most of the foreign media sites are not blocked: nytimes.com,
cnn.com, etc.
Is it true? How do you define "most"? How about BBC? How about
Washinton Post etc? Is nytimes.com really not blocked?
Do you know how they implement the dynamic blocking trick?
Rebecca, and most western people, don't be fooled by the CCP
government and minions like chinafool (I'm amazed to see him
using such a suitable name).
If you want to know more, please google:金盾工程
It has been a long time since they adopted a powerful filtering
and blocking scheme as "dynamic content-based blocking". Now
they set the monitoring software to screen the data flow. If
certain words in the black list matched, the connection is cut
off and the server IP blocked for certain period of time. That's
enough to stop the ordinary people get access to sensitive
information. Most people will get annoyed and just abandon
trying again. This scheme of blocking has several merits:
a. The websites that the CCP fears the people to see is a endless
list. However powerful their firewall machine can be, it's
theoretically impossible for them to maintain an endless
blacklist of websites while keep the internet run efficiently.
So the experts proposed a dynamic blocking scheme.
b. If the CCP blocks simply the IP of certain website, just like
how they did years ago when first blocking sourceforge.net for
the freenet project hosted there, the majority of political-
ignorant people were irritated and because they felt they wanted
to access "non-political" sites, they dare (in a self-cheating
sense) to speak out to protest against the government. This in
fact impaired the governmental authority. So they devised a
dynamic blocking scheme to block only certain URL when certain
words in a limited blacklist is matched, and only for a temporary
time. After that, the block is released automatically. This can
also cheat the innocent people and argue with those reporters
about the blocking issue that "You're lying! You said xxx site
is blocked?! But I can access it now! See it on my browser...".
It's a very common tricky waste of time to defeat the liberal
reporters.
c. The dynamic temporary blocking scheme can also isolate the
keen political liberalists, anti-government principals from the
ordinary selfish people. Since the majority "chinafool" kind of
people are selfish and ignorant of the principle of political
rights and the importance of freedom of speech, provided that
they can access the websites they like, they will ignore the
trample of rights of the other (minor group of) people. Even
more, when their need to access certain website is blocked by the
CCP government because of some political expressions of minor
groups, they will (and in fact they really did) actively
cooperate with the CCP government to drive off these
disobedients, or further persecute them even more severely than
the CCP. It's a common human vice.
And I should emphasize my comment on some words appeared in the earlier comments of the other readers. When they said "Chinese people DON'T", in most cases, the fact is not that voluntary, but it should be more exactly put as "Chinese people DARE NOT".
That's very important. Chinese people learnt to live in dread. And they have no choice but to cheat themselves as they "DON'T" in so many cases which in fact is they "DARE NOT", to make their lives look a little easier.
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 10:43 AM
chinafool and some other commenters are totally cheating, I have to say.
I can't get enough time to waste with such "fool"s. It's a suicide to commit oneself into the endless lies of "chinafools".
Let they be. Rebecca, the majority of Chinese people can't view your site, either because of the blocking, or obstacle of language. So your effort of communicating with "chinafool"s type of liars is really a waste of time, I suppose. :P
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 10:56 AM
chinafool: Great site and great effort!
I can't help sneering at the above unctuous cheering. :)
By saying "Great site", he means, "It's so great that it's blocked".
But saying "great effort" he means, "however great effort you endeavor, it's such a GREAT chance for me to cheat you without the risk to be debunked by Chinese people thanks to CCP's Golden-Shield Project equal GREAT firewall!".
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 11:09 AM
chinafool: Great site and great effort!
I can't help sneering at the above unctuous cheering. :)
By saying "Great site", he means, "It's so great that it's blocked".
By saying "great effort" he means, "however great effort you endeavor, it's such a GREAT chance for me to cheat you without the risk to be debunked by Chinese people thanks to CCP's Golden-Shield Project equally GREAT firewall!".
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 11:11 AM
Ranc: Secondly, Chinese language web sites outside China are mostly of poor quality.
Yes, you're SO correct. :) Including 美国参考 http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/ea/mgck/
美国之音 http://voanews.com
BBC 中文网
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/chinese/news/default1.stm
google newsgroups chinese version, google cached pages,
all these are of "poor quality", so Chinese people don't care,
thus the CCP government kindly blocked them in order not to bother the Chinese people. :)
chinafool, I wish your blog will be as "GREAT" a site as Rebecca's, thus you should pay as "GREAT" effort as the CCP government make you to pay. :) I'm happily waiting for it.
I'm sorry but I'm using very slow proxy so some posts got submitted again when the connection was considered dropped. It's not a "GREAT effort" to annoy the readers. :) But, I'm INTENTIONALLY here to irritate the Chinafool/Ranc type of liars by using harsh words, as GREAT as I can, through a proxy that reputed "99.99%" (what a scientific attitude!) Chinese people don't use. :)
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 11:32 AM
Yes, most Chinese people don't care those sites which are blocked by the CCP government at an enormous cost of public treasury. Do you imply that the CCP government is more stupid than you are?
If you take the post of CCP Minister of Propaganda, the CCP government should save a lot of money! :) You're so optimistic! You should win a dozen Iron Crosses! :)
The CCP officials are too stupid. They should not fear the Chinese websites abroad. They should not fear that more and more Chinese people get access to those sites of "poor quality". They should not fear that those "game" loving Chinese people would be attracted and enlightened by the oversea Chinese websites if not blocked. What a "patriotic" discovery! To demonstrate your "patriotism", you, chinafool, should present your important "random thoughts" and "more numbers" to the CCP Ministry of Propaganda, for them to cut down budgets on Golden-Shield project, and thus can build more prisons to detain disobedients,
and to buy more weapons from Russia to fight against Taiwan for the so-called "very patriotic" Chinese people. :)
Posted by: lihlii | July 03, 2005 at 12:04 PM