Chinese Official on the Net and Issues of Power in China
Whoa, there has been quite a stir on the web about the comments made by a Chinese official that China does not block the Internet:
I don’t think we should be using different standards to judge China. In China, we don’t have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that’s a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I’ve heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it’s blocked. I’m sure I don’t know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all.
This is not an uncommon statement as I have heard many different Chinese academics and business make similar claims about how they have the “largest offices,” the “best beer in the world,” and can say “whatever they want.” These are obviously interesting statements, which I can’t deny outright, but more anchor my own response in trying to understand the mindsight of the people who make these statements.
Also, Patrick is posting about his dilemma with getting his employer, Beijing University, to pay him for teaching (even though he has been doing so for the past month). He is writing his dissertation in part about this type of power-struggle in China.
I will make a blanket assertion, as I often do, that this power struggle comes from the myth of trying to maintain a socialist nation in the face of the dominant global democratic capitalist economy. As anyone who has been to China knows, the distance between the really poor and the really rich is pretty huge. Where’s that middle class for stability?
