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from the they-were-making-such-good-progress dept.
Here's an article that's guaranteed to get Soylent News blocked by the Great Firewall of China, assuming hasn't already happened. The New York Times reports:
China has ordered several of the country's most popular internet portals to halt much of their original news reporting, in a move that could confine an even larger share of the journalism in the country to Communist-controlled mouthpieces ahead of an important party meeting next year.
The profit-driven portals, several of which are listed on United States stock exchanges, have in recent years expanded their investigative teams to increase readership among China's more than 600 million internet users by scooping the staid state-owned news media on stories about subjects including industrial pollution, tainted milk powder and even police brutality.
But on Monday, several news organizations reported that the Beijing office of China's internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, ordered the websites of a number of the companies, including Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Phoenix, to shut down or "clean up" several of their most popular online news features.
It looks like China is moving back to a model not unlike what once existed in the Soviet Union, where "there was no izvestiya in Pravda, and no pravda in Izvestiya."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mendax on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:15PM
Oh, you'd be surprised. Information wants to be free, and so long as the Great Firewall of China allows access to the world outside of China, some clever soul will find a way to learn about what is going on. Even if it turns into a nation-wide intranet like that operated by the North Koreans, information will get through, especially in a country as corrupt as China.
You may recall the Tienamin Square protests and subsequent massacre by the army. Even though the Chinese government placed a news blackout on what happened there, the news still got out because they did not block all means of communications to the outside world. It was impossible. As I recall, people sent faxes to others in Hong Kong. If such a thing were to happen today, there would be photographs taken by smart phones leaking out eventually, if even by flash drive given covertly to foreigners.
The Chinese are fighting a losing battle. In the Soviet Union, even with a heavily controlled and censored news media, news from the outside world that the Soviets didn't want their people to know made it in. If you wanted to be well-informed, it was possible.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:43PM
Information finds ways when someone has an interest in making it so which outweighs the risk (or consequences).
Just the threat is enough to reduce the flow, which is usually sufficient to avoid the much dreaded "instability".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @12:17AM
If information wants to be free, why are you parroting the American propaganda version of what happened instead of the facts?
It's basically irrelevant anyway. As Fox 'News' shows, most people don't want to be well-informed anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @01:16AM
ITYMM "Tiananmen"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @01:09AM
"Tiananmen"