Where Does the Party Want You to Go Today?

Microsoft has capitulated to Chinese censors by banning certain "sensitive" terms on its blog service, Spaces:

The [Financial Times] said that attempts to input words in Chinese such as 'democracy' prompted an error message from the site: 'This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item.' Other phrases banned included the Chinese for 'demonstration', 'democratic movement' and 'Taiwan independence'.

"Freedom" is also, apparently, verboten. If you're inclined to look for silver linings, this does at least make transparent to the average Chinese web surfer exactly how paranoid its own government is—and what sorts of things leaders are afraid of.

Comments

sage | June 13, 2005, 2:59pm | #

It appears that Chinese bloggers could learn from U.S. spammers. After all, there's more than one way to spell FR&&DOM. Well, maybe not, but it looks close.

Eric Atkinson | June 13, 2005, 3:00pm | #

After Mircosoft removed the word "Nigger" from Encarta, I knew they would bend over for any pressure group. Bunch of pussies. I hope this isn't a big trend, whereas any bluenose in France or some German anti nazi can censor my access to information I may want. Or some such.

Stevo Darkly | June 13, 2005, 3:02pm | #

Fr33d0m!

And there are at least 9 billion ways to spell p3n!5.

Number 6 | June 13, 2005, 3:03pm | #

Yet another reason for me to consider switching to Linux.

Mr. Nice Guy | June 13, 2005, 3:05pm | #

Sometimes it's tough supporting the free market when they pull shit like this. To go along with a clearly oppressive government just to make a buck.. that's just disgusting.

Bill Gates, you're a douchebag.

Eric the .5b | June 13, 2005, 3:07pm | #

Yet another reason for me to consider switching to Linux.

Eh. Maybe. When I read the item on Slashdot, I remembered the nigh-orgasmic celebration-fest on there a few years back when it was announced the PRC government was working on its own Linux distribution. When Eric S. Raymond ventured to suggest that open source/free software had ethics that weren't compatible with totalitarianism, pretty much every Linux geek available started ranting at him for trying to impose his political beliefs on them...

duncan | June 13, 2005, 3:12pm | #

|=|233|}0|/|

theCoach | June 13, 2005, 3:15pm | #

While this does point out horrible Chinese policy, I think it does not reflect poorly on MS.
They were not in a strong negotiating position. There service there will help, I hope, to add pressure against this kind of horrible policy in the future.

CAT_Violations | June 13, 2005, 3:17pm | #

I hope this isn't a big trend, whereas any bluenose in France or some German anti nazi can censor my access to information I may want. Or some such.

That brings to mind a hypothetical. What if someone was libeling, slandering, defaming, etc. you, or invading your privacy - all actionable torts - and then blocking your access to it? I wonder if that could be considered destruction or concealment of evidence if you were able to eventually bring an action?

The First Amendment usually protects someone from "covering your mouth" - protecting your ability to speak freely. But what about cases where someone is "covering your ears" - preventing you from hearing and therefore discovering lies or false speech that is continually doing damage to you? Especially in today's electronic age where that would be pretty easy to do.

scape | June 13, 2005, 3:25pm | #

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to google.

independent worm | June 13, 2005, 3:26pm | #

It appears that Chinese bloggers could learn from U.S. spammers. After all, there's more than one way to spell FR&&DOM. Well, maybe not, but it looks close

I think this might be part of the underlying motive. If you DON'T capitulate to some extent, the Chinese government could just ban even more access. By at least putting the computers and internet connections and blog spaces, etc in the people's hands, you have to hope/trust that out of a billion of 'em somebody'll be smart enough to find ways around it.

Look how fast the internet got ahead of the US govt. And we live in a free society where, in theory, our government is educated and is really up on things. Congress was blindsided, to say the least. I can still remember all those goofy congressional questions about which courts should have jurisdiction over disputes (like breaches of contract) that happen on the internet, given that transactions would happen in "cyberspace" and not in any physical place. Har! Those were definitely the days!

Now imagine how fast the internet will get away from the Chinese govt. There you've got a zillion slow-footed bureaucrats left over from the Ming dynasty going up against a couple hundred million internet users. Its no contest. Banning a few words to keep concepts like "freedom" off the screens and out of the minds of Chinese internet users is like holding out a sheet of loose leaf paper to try and knock back a tsunami.

David Woycechowsky | June 13, 2005, 3:34pm | #

Is l33tspeak compatible with the written Chinese language?

Yogi | June 13, 2005, 3:34pm | #

I agree independent worm. It's just like those idiots who speak out and say we should ban a certain book from the library. What do you think the first book most people want to check out will be?

Jennifer | June 13, 2005, 3:34pm | #

I hope independent worm is right, but given the Chinese language I'm not sure if he is. It's one thing to sneak around the censors when you have an alphabetical language; if our government banned the word "freedom" we could sneak around that by using "phreedum" or other creative spellings. How can you do this in Chinese? One symbol=one word, thought or idea. Maybe they could do something involving phonetics, the way an English speaker could spell "freedom" by combining the symbols for "free" (meaning no-cost) and "dumb."

Number 6 | June 13, 2005, 3:38pm | #

Eric- It may be true that some slashdot types are morons, but there's a difference between using the same OS they do, and actively patronizing a company that compromises with totalitarian murderers.

Besides, the main reason I'm considering it is that windows sucks.

Number 6 | June 13, 2005, 3:40pm | #

Jennifer-I could be wrong, but I think they've developed a phonetic version of written Chinese. A girl I used to know was a Chinese linguist, and I seem to recall a conversation about that. Besides, there are thousands of symbols in traditional Chinese-I can't imagine how one would make a keyboard without creating a phonetic version.

Jennifer | June 13, 2005, 3:41pm | #

Number 6--
According to an article I read, Chinese typewriters have something like 4,000 keys. A Chinese typist who can do 11 words per minute is considered very, very fast.

independent worm | June 13, 2005, 3:44pm | #

Well, like i said, I think somebody out of a billion people can come up with something. I ain't a chinese speaker so I can't even begin to guess how they'd do it, but again, I believe a couple hundred million internet users can stay ahead of a bunch of lazy old bumbling bureaucrats.

independent worm | June 13, 2005, 3:48pm | #

For example, think about phonemes (is that the right word).

No freedom? How about i write a two word phrase that sounds like it.

Fry dumb? Fray dome? Free dim? Freed om? Flea dom? And i'm sure acronyms (AOO, "absence of oppression") could make nice stand ins too.

And I gotta think they have the capacity to make up new words and stuff as the need arises; and the presence of censorship would portend the arisal of the aforesaid need.

Russell | June 13, 2005, 3:49pm | #

regarding gates reported collusion :

"The [Financial Times] said that attempts to input words in Chinese such as 'Athenian social organizaton' prompted an error message from the site: 'This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item.' Other phrases banned included the Chinese for ' people moving around at the same time for the same reason ', ' Athenic change of coordinates' and ' to knot pale decoupledness'."

Jobs would neve go along with software that would do such a thing.

independent worm | June 13, 2005, 3:49pm | #

All of that, only in Chinese. You get the idea. If one language can do it, i"m sure all languages can do it.

chthus | June 13, 2005, 3:49pm | #

While there are phoenetic ways of writing Chinese used in the west and to a lesser degree in China, the basic Chinese keyboard is still pictogram based. There are thousand of characters, but there are core shapes used frequently and a standard 24 key keyboard has been developed with increasing layers of complexity based on usage of 'shift' type keys.

Here is a brief description along with diagram of a keyboard layout.

grylliade | June 13, 2005, 3:51pm | #

I could be wrong, but I think they've developed a phonetic version of written Chinese.

They have. It's called Zhuyin or Bopomofo, and it's been around since 1913 or so. But it's just not that common; it's mainly used to instruct children in pronunciation, or to indicate the pronunciation of a rare word. The PRC prefers Pinyin, the romanization system for written Chinese.

Besides, there are thousands of symbols in traditional Chinese-I can't imagine how one would make a keyboard without creating a phonetic version.

Here's how (although phonetic methods are among those used).

Serafina | June 13, 2005, 3:52pm | #

Banning individual words doesn't necessarily mean that they can ban particular ideas or their expression. It's an idiotic and literal-minded attempt at censorship, especially when dealing with such abstract concepts. The "freedom" espoused by the "freedom fries" wingnuts is something very different from the concept that I have of it.

I just finished reading Ha Jin's War Trash, which is largely about the experiences of Chinese soldiers in Korean POW camps, being savagely pulled between the Nationalist Chinese and the Communist Chinese, choosing whether to be repatriated to Taiwan or to mainland China. One soldier mistakenly ends up signing up to go to Taiwan because he thought "Free China" meant the mainland.

Serafina | June 13, 2005, 3:52pm | #

Grr. I forget this site has no edit function.

drooling richard | June 13, 2005, 4:05pm | #

"According to an article I read, Chinese typewriters have something like 4,000 keys. A Chinese typist who can do 11 words per minute is considered very, very fast."

That would be eleven icons per minute, not words per minute. The Cantonese, Manderine, and Korean writers use the same icons but pronounce the words that they represent differently.

Jennifer | June 13, 2005, 4:09pm | #

Drooling Richard-
Icon, word, what's the difference? Either way, I'd think that being able to pick out eleven specific buttons per minute from a selection of 4,000 is pretty good.

Lewis | June 13, 2005, 4:13pm | #

How about Free Dumb?

Regardless, when I was over in Hong Kong a couple years back (2003), I watched American Beauty on regular TV with all its adult language and nudity without being censored. I did have to put up with the sub-titles. I know there is no comparisons of freedoms, but who are we to judge a corporation when it bows to governmental pressures? What's Howard Stern have to say about this?

Ken Shultz | June 13, 2005, 4:24pm | #

I suspect Microsoft is hurting its blogging service as much as anything--how hard is it for the average Chinese person to swap blogging services?

...and I hope Microsoft got something in return for this, perhaps the Chinese government agreed to crack down on piracy...for a while.

I expect our constitutionally elected representatives to stand firm in the face of censorship, but when a company cuts a deal...I don't know...I just don't hold Microsoft to the same standard.

P.S. If you own shares and you really care, write a letter to the Investor Relations Department or do what you can to try have it brought up at the shareholders meeting or sell you shares or somethin'.

Rimfax | June 13, 2005, 4:33pm | #

Chinese does have sufficient flexibility, both phonetically and idiomatically to reuse idograms for new words. Consider that Coca-Cola literally translated is something like "eat the wet tadpole" because the phonetics are fairly close to the English pronunciation, and this is not any more of a problem for the Chinese than it is for Americans to buy products from Siemens or Volvo.

Also consider the linguistic flexibility of the human mind. A few weeks back I heard a cell phone commercial with the word "shizzle". Also, Dave Chapelle used the phrase "skeet skeet skeet" a number of times before the censors caught on. For extra bonus, consider the masterwork of euphemisms, the film "Johnny Dangerously".

Jennifer | June 13, 2005, 4:40pm | #

Coke was originally known as "Bite the wax tadpole" over there, but they've changed it to something which translates as "Let the mouth rejoice."

keith | June 13, 2005, 4:44pm | #

Of course, the easiest thing to do is simply for a blogger to pick a word, any word at random, and start using it in place of "freedom." Context will make it easy to figure out, and before you know it, presto! Everyone knows what it really means when someone rights "The Chinese government takes away our monkeypus of speech!"

Number 6 | June 13, 2005, 4:44pm | #

Rimfax-You bastage! This is fargin' war!

Ken-I don't own shares, but I can hurt Microsoft (albeit in a very small way) by using different software.

smacky | June 13, 2005, 4:44pm | #

At least wax tadpoles probably wouldn't cause type II diabetes or eat away your stomach lining.

Flea dom?

That transliteration would agree with the traditional, so-called "Asian Lisp" written of in antiquity, e.g.:

Deck the halls with Balls of Horry
Fa ra ra ra ra
ra ra ra ra

I.e. use of the "L" sound in place or "R" or vice versa.

Galius | June 13, 2005, 5:33pm | #

Mr. Nice Guy,
You say that companies voluntarily following gov't regulation makes it difficult to support free markets.
Wouldn't the alternative to free markets be to force companies to follow gov't regulation? What's the difference at that point?
Unless you mean writing regulations forbidding companies from following regulations.

Shem | June 13, 2005, 5:35pm | #

The Japanese have actually started using a little gizmo that looks quite a lot like a PDA for writing out Kanji. It just hooks into the computer and works with the word processor. It's somewhat more difficult to adapt it for Chinese, since they have about nine times the number of characters, but I know that there's people working on it even as we speak.

Chinese censors would be incredibly easy to get around though, since so many sounds are either reused or used with a different tone. Freedom, for example, is pronounced ziyou, with a lowered tone on the zi and a rising tone on you. All one would need to do is combine, for example, the characters for "word" and "swim." It's utter nonsense to any filtering program, but together they have exactly the same pronunciation and tones as the word for freedom. Anyone who were so inclined could interpret that the writer is meaning freedom, allowing for surreptitious communication among like-minded individuals. In fact, the whole business of censorship could end up backfiring on the Chinese government, as not only could the ties that would be created while disseminating the codes create solidarity among anti-government forces, it would also require that the Chinese put actual human beings in charge of checking for anti-government thought, where if they just monitored what people were saying without trying to stop it they could use their software and get a sense of where people stood at the same time.

Neb Okla | June 13, 2005, 6:01pm | #

Spaces wouldn't let me use the word "Hardcore" in a subject line to a post.

crimethink | June 13, 2005, 6:24pm | #

Not sure if this is general knowledge, but I was in China for several months last year, and Reason.com was blocked every time.

Must be the naughty language...

Jennifer | June 13, 2005, 7:49pm | #

I didn't know that, Shem. Let wordswim ring!

Dave | June 13, 2005, 8:09pm | #

Hey microsoft, what does it feel like to sell your soul?

Cloud William | June 13, 2005, 8:41pm | #

Free-dom!?!

That is Yang worship word. You will not speak it!

Stevo Kirkly | June 13, 2005, 9:33pm | #

LOL!

But Cloud William, this was not written for chiefs. ... That which you called Ee'd Plebnista was not written for chiefs or kings or warriors or the rich and powerful, but for all the people!

Stevo Darkly | June 13, 2005, 9:34pm | #

Deck the halls with Balls of Horry
Fa ra ra ra ra
ra ra ra ra

I ruv "A Chlismas Stolly"!

Carl | June 13, 2005, 11:26pm | #

Self-determination (=freedom) -> Self-oiling 自由 -> 自油

Incidentally, that bit about a "four thousand key keyboard" is crap. Chinese just enter text in roman letters, then press a button to switch it into characters. If there are more than one possible characters for a sound, a list is presented.

Carl | June 13, 2005, 11:32pm | #

Incidentally, if you want to know what reason censorship is about, GeorgeBush.com is still unavailable to those attempting to access it from outside the US. This isn't a glitch. The people running the website sniff out where the request is coming from and will silently deny requests from overseas.

Carl | June 13, 2005, 11:37pm | #

One final thought: Given that the name of their neighbor is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, how are people supposed to talk about their allies without saying "democracy"?

Shem | June 14, 2005, 12:37am | #

In the ideal Chinese (or indeed, any totalitarian) State, people don't talk about their neighbors. They leave all that troublesome business about thinking to their government, focusing their attention on matters that are "better suited" to their place, like being virtual slaves, or getting starved to death and then shipped off to camps when they complain. That's hyperbole, but not by terribly much.

And I was thinking about the use of actual words, since so many are available and it would have the added benefit of being incredibly difficult to machine screen, but then I realized that presenting the government with such a clear sign that all the old modes of censorship would be impossible would be counterproductive so early in the game. Internet tech is still new for China, and it's widespread use represents the best hope of bringing down the old order, but it's still at a stage where the Communists could end it if they really wanted to. Better to avoid it's use until the Communists can't live without it, or, if it must be used, to make the methods look manageable, even as measures are taken to protect anonymity. Nonsense words work; computers can be trained to look for those. Replacement words might very well freak the upper echelons into action that could be considered rash, like doing away with the system alltogether, or only allowing it to businesses and government offices. And if that happens, they're back to trying to forment rebellion with printing presses. Not terribly useful in the age of Big Brother. Or, I suppose 哥哥 would be more suitable in this case.;)

Shem | June 14, 2005, 12:41am | #

I can't figure out how to make the characters appear. It's supposed to be gege, or Elder (Big) Brother, in case that wasn't readily obvious to anyone.

CAT_Violations | June 14, 2005, 1:15am | #

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to google.

You got it.

That's a good project for freedom of speech loving geeks everywhere to be working on. A search engine that automatically takes countermeasures to get to blocked sites. There's your chance to pull your own Google and become wealthy geeks. Some people probably already have improvised work-arounds, just clean it up, slap a name on it, and start distributing it.

CAT_Violations | June 14, 2005, 1:19am | #

A girl I used to know was a Chinese linguist, and I seem to recall a conversation about that.

Number 6-

Was she cunning? Was she one of those fiendish cunning linguists?

Couldn't resist.

MattSchiavenza | June 14, 2005, 2:30am | #

I live in China now and (obviously) can access Hit & Run and Reason.....when I arrived, all typepad sites were blocked but a few months ago censors suddenly removed the ban. All blogspot sites are blocked, as is Google News and the BBC. I'm sure there are lots of others, but these are the ones I've been unable to access.

Chinaman | June 14, 2005, 6:49am | #

For a publication I consider to be read by some of the sharper tools in the civic shed, the ignorance of China shown by readers of this thread -- from simplistic caricatures of the Chinese government to ricidulous statements about the Chinese language -- is absolutely stunning. If this is the future, then we're fucked.

Jennifer | June 14, 2005, 8:42am | #

Well, Chinaman, here's your chance to rip the blinders from our ignorant American eyes. I'm not so concerned about any incorrect knowledge I have about the Chinese language, but what are we getting wrong about the current government over there?

Mr. Nice Guy | June 14, 2005, 9:12am | #

Galius:

"You say that companies voluntarily following gov't regulation makes it difficult to support free markets."

If that's what I sounded like, it wasn't my intention. I oftimes get murky when I go on my usual rants.

I'm saying that I personally have difficulty at times defending the rights of private determination when it's so obviously evil. (It makes more sense to me now - someone pointed out that MS is in collusion with the Chinese government to crack down on piracy.)

I'm certainly not for government regulation, but people should be aware of the devils we're dealing with. The communist Chinese are murderers. They butcher their own people who attempt to exercise the basic freedoms that we take for granted. If I owned shares of MS I would seriously consider selling them in protest.

kwais | June 14, 2005, 10:32am | #

I'm so over my head.

What does "skeet skeet skeet" and "Johny dangerously" really mean?

keith | June 14, 2005, 11:43am | #

They block blogspot? How will the Chinese find out what that sassy 16-year-old girl in LA thinks of her bitchy manager at work???

Chinaman | June 14, 2005, 11:53am | #

Well, Jennifer, as an American who has lived in China and Taiwan on and off since 1992, I am continually amazed by how the rhetoric about China has gotten increasingly grim over years, despite the fact that Chinese people now enjoy personal freedoms that they could only dream of 10 years ago.

The China that I first experienced as a foreign exchange student in 1992 was a depressed and depressing place. Your "work unit" (danwei) controlled every aspect of your life: your employment, your housing, what and where you could eat, what you could wear, where you went to school, etc. To cite just one example of how grim things were, all women of child-bearing age had their menstrual cycles charted on large board posted prominently on the outside of the family planning office for all to see. You couldn't travel freely within the country, you couldn't buy what you wanted to buy, you couldn't work where you wanted to work, and you couldn't say what you wanted to say.

The last year I spent in China was in 2003, and there was simply no comparison with the China I once knew. People are free to look for work, shop wherever they want, travel throughout the country, chase tail in the clubs, get shitty with their friends, etc. When I'm in Beijing, I periodically conduct a "taxi driver test," which involves catching a cab and striking up a conversation with the cabbie. The objective is to get all of the "xiaodao xiaoxi" -- or gossip -- about the goings on in the capital. In the past, say ten years ago, people were afraid to talk much, even to a foreigner and even about the distant past -- e.g. What did you do during the Cultural Revolution? They certainly didn't openly criticize the government and its policies. Now, they do it all the time. In fact, now if you want to shoot the shit with these guys about what a bunch of assholes government officials are, or what a prick Mao was, it's no big deal.

Now, there are certainly limitations, and I don't want to make light of this. Openly criticizing the government in the media is strictly verboten, and the government attempts to tightly control political activism, especially when it involves potentially volatile entities such as religious organizations or labor groups. (The reason that religious groups are perceived as such a threat is that they have been a source of anti-government agitation for millennia of Chinese history.) But the government has allowed a surprising amount of organizing and discussion to take place on the margins, as long as it doesn't threaten the Party's hold on power. And there is something to be said for the stability that this form of gradualism has provided. China has prospered and become increasingly free as some of its former communist peers -- those who some say toyed with democratic institutions before they were ready -- are mired in civil wars, corruption, and ultra-nationalism. Russia anyone?

The simple fact is that the Chinese government does not control its population nearly as tightly as it once did. And at this point, it would be virtually impossible for them to do so because society is far more complex and fluid than it once was. As a result, very few Chinese people now fear the government in the way they did a decade ago. Nobody that I know (mostly academics and students) seriously think that they'll be locked up in a labor camp in BF Tibet for saying the Party is made up of a bunch of ass clowns. While most people still desire more of a voice in politics, for the overwhelming majority of Chinese people, life is much better and more promising than it was in 1992. And when you consider how improbable China's rise has been, you have to give a little credit to the Chinese government for initiating the reform movement and keeping it all together.

Are there problems in China? Sure. But a little perspective is in order.

grylliade | June 14, 2005, 1:57pm | #

Incidentally, that bit about a "four thousand key keyboard" is crap. Chinese just enter text in roman letters, then press a button to switch it into characters.

It's probably not crap. Remember, we're talking about typewriters here, not computers. You see, once upon a time, typewriters were mechanical, and they couldn't do things like change Roman to Chinese script instantly.

independent worm | June 14, 2005, 1:59pm | #

Careful, never know who might be posting on this thread:

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/05/good_luck_with.shtml#comments

Mr. Nice Guy | June 14, 2005, 2:10pm | #

Chinaman:

Thanks for a very interesting and enjoyable post :)

Shem | June 14, 2005, 3:24pm | #

Chinaman, I agree that things are have improved by an incredible degree. And I'm not afraid to say that the government holds more than a little credit for that fact. There's simply no comparison between 10 years ago and today, and that's incredible. But, if the global economy begins to get bad, or if something else happens to threaten the improvement that's keeping the people happy, and as a result, the citizens of China get restless, do you doubt for a moment that the higher-ups won't immediately try to return things to where they were? When I went to China, I saw a nation that was slowly gaining freedom, that's true, but I also saw a government that has, over the past 50 years, had no compunction with doing what it deems necessary to maintain power. That includes starving vast swaths of the population and shipping people off to the middle of nowhere to "think about what they've done." It's not happening now. That fact doesn't mean it can't happen again, and people would be wise to understand and prepare themselves for that, even as they hope for the best.

smacky | June 14, 2005, 4:07pm | #

Stevo,

You get the idea!

"Insane Crown Posse"....heh.

Chinaman | June 14, 2005, 4:33pm | #

Shem, I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that the Chinese have "slowly been gaining freedom." I don't think there's much slow about it. Talk to anybody who has been to China repeatedly over the past couple of decades, and you're more likely to hear words like "revolutionary," "mind-boggling," or "holy shit."

And it simply isn't accurate to say that the Chinese government is the same now as it was 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. To quote the Buick commercial, this is definitely not your father's party. To say that "the Chinese government" has starved millions of people (a reference to the Great Leap forward in the late 1950s which created one of the largest recorded famines in human history) or shipped them out to god knows where is like saying that the US government locks up Japanese Americans or maintains a system of apartheid against blacks. Technically, this is true, since the U.S. government was guilty of doing such things as late as the 1960s. But I think the claim is fundamentally dishonest; it obfuscates more than it explains.

Of course, the real irony for all you Patriots out there . . . is that OUR government is shipping people out to the middle of nowhere to think about what they've done! So, Shem, maybe you're right after all. Maybe we'd all better prepare ourselves for that . . . even as we hope for the best.

Shem | June 14, 2005, 5:37pm | #

Political freedoms are slow in coming. Economic and social freedoms are phenomenal, I freely grant, but the Party is still maintaining control of the po;itics. And the difference between the internment of Japanese-Americans and slavery are that the US government has publicly broken with those policies. The Communist Party still hasn't repudiated the ideologies that allowed them to take those actions, and until they do I'll remain somewhat apprehensive about the possiblity of their returning, in much the same way that I'm apprehensive about, as you mentioned, the American government refusing to repudiate torture. I mean, really, where the hell do governments get these ideas?

crimethink | June 14, 2005, 5:57pm | #

Chinaman,

I would have to agree that the China I experienced was not what I expected. I was there during the stretch run of the 2004 election, and a girl I was talking to in Lanzhou mentioned that the locals were very envious of our election system, since unlike in Chinese elections, we have a choice between different parties.

I had not the heart to tell her how limited I felt our choice between Bush and Kerry actually was...

Chinaman | June 14, 2005, 7:55pm | #

Again, it's a matter of perspective. While the communist party has not repudiated all of its policies, it has explicitly distanced itself from some of its more egregious policy errors (those of the Maoist era), and it has implicitly done so in regard to more recent episodes such as the Tiananmen Massacre. While an "apology" for the TM may never be forthcoming, I think we need to be a bit more understanding about the exigencies that drive Chinese policy. After all, countries like Japan still haven't honestly dealt with atrocities that took place in the 1940s. Why should we expect the Chinese government to seriously confront events that took place at the end of the 1980s?

I think it's helpful in this regard to consider the case of Taiwan. Here we have a little island with a population of just over 20 million people that was under martial law and controlled by a single political party from 1948 until 1987 -- almost 40 years. And presidential elections didn't take place until 1996. And this was so-called "free China"! If it takes a relatively small and prosperous "nation" such as Taiwan fifty years to get its act together, I don't think that the recent track record of the PRC is all that bad. (Think also of places like Singapore, which for most of the recent past has been effectively controlled by a single party political system. I don't hear people bitching about that.) It's not great, mind you, but the situation has been trending in a more positive direction consistently since the death of Mao in 1976.

Criticizing China is big business, and lots of people have a vested interest in painting China in as unflattering terms as they possibly can. Conservatives go on about the persecution of Christians or the rise of China militarily, while liberals criticize its human rights policy and hold candlelight vigils/concerts to free Tibet. Even the parties that you would expect to be most interested in being pro-China -- large multi-national corporations such as Microsoft -- have to strike a precarious balance between making money and being called "a bunch of pussies" by the general public for "coddling dictators." There are plenty of MNCs that make concessions to governments all around the globe, and rarely do people -- especially libertarians -- get the urge to sermonize.

And nobody who believes in free trade should be moralizing about any of this. I mean, should the Euros discontinue trade with us because we've got underage retards lined up on death row down in Texas -- something that they consider (perhaps legitimately) to be a human rights violation? Of course not. Should we pull out of China because they occasionally use their own citizens for target practice? Of course not. Because if we did, we'd have another twitchy, insular country like North Korea on our hands, and that wouldn't be good for anybody.

Shem | June 14, 2005, 10:18pm | #

Chinaman, I don't disagree with what you're saying, but pointing at others and saying "but they're just as bad" doesn't really address any of the points that have been made. Yeah, there are other people that are just as bad, but that doesn't make China any better, and although I couldn't be more pleased that things are changing, I don't think they deserve a pass for it, any more than we deserve a pass on the torture issue because we have a good Constitution and free elections.

Chinaman | June 15, 2005, 11:22am | #

Shem, my whole point in joining this thread was to correct what I perceived as being mischaracterizations of the Chinese state and Chinese society. If you go back and read earlier posts and read my responses, I think I've achieved my objective.

And, to address your last post, it IS important that I contextualize this debate by pointing out the situation in other countries, because the whole assumption of this thread -- that MS is doing something terrible in catering to the Chinese government -- appears much different when we acknowledge that the Chinese state isn't nearly as bad, or as atypical, as everybody is making it out to be. Again, this doesn't mean that the Chinese state shouldn't be criticized for illiberal policies. But it does the change the way that we view those policies and the companies who have to work around them. That's the point.

Frankly, when I read Julian's initial post, I said to myself, "Yeah, so what?" I knew enough about the situation in China, and about the way that business is conducted in other parts of the world, to know that this wasn't really news. MS restricting speech on its search engine is the least of our worries. If you really want to see how underhanded American companies can get, you really need to read up on the history of Latin America. The shit we've been pulling down there for the past century will blow your mind.

I have to say, though, that we have touched on a very knotty issue when it comes to libertarian thought. After all, Reason's motto is "Free Minds, Free Markets." But you can't always have it both ways. What if you owned a company that supplied picks and shovels to labor camps in Burma? Or you owned a company that did a brisk business in those blue plastic bags that the Khmer Rouge used to suffocate its victims in the killing fields of Cambodia? What are the limits of free trade?