China: Censorship as usual

It's hard to guess how IOC head Jacques Rogge thought he'd get away with his lie that China would not be censoring the Internet during the Olympics. Not only has censorship continued as usual, but the IOC was caught making a secret deal to agree to censorship. Yielding to censorship when there is no alternative is one thing; claiming "there will be no censorship on the Internet" while working behind the scenes on a censorship deal is despicable.

Kevan Gosper, whom the IOC backstabbed with the deal, suggested that "the internet crackdown may have been triggered by the series of disasters and mishaps that had 'traumatised' China." If so, that's a very frustrating result for all of us who gave money to help the earthquake victims, thinking that China might become a bit more open as a result. Now I have to wonder how much of the money I gave just went straight into the pockets of "traumatised" Chinese bureaucrats.

A news article which I found on the Financial Times website yesterday, but today was reduced to a very truncated form, contained the following:

However, the ruling Communist party has stressed the need to use the internet to “correctly guide” public opinion. The world wide web is “the battlefield forward position for the propagation of advanced socialist culture”, Hu Jintao, president, said last month.

For all of its supposed encouragement of private enterprise, China remains a fundamentally socialist state. "Private" property exists only in the sense of a trust granted by governmental authority, on which unlimited conditions can be set. Freedom of speech is implicit in real private property; if you own something, you can use it for any purpose which doesn't violate the rights of others. If you merely have it in "stewardship" for the "good of the people," then "the people" (who run the government) can place any requirements they want in order to "correctly guide" the other people. It wouldn't even be right to say that the private enterprise system in China is a sham; the government admits to being socialist, with all that entails.

For whatever it's worth, I'm giving my business to Pepsi as long as there are Olympic promotions on Coke cans.