Someday China is going to be a wonderful place to live. The Chinese people are already wonderful, but the ruling class that passes for their government are jerks to the last man.
An article from the BBC this morning discusses the lengths to which the ruling party will go to stifle Chinese access to the internet. Encouragingly, the article notes that, "No matter how sophisticated its technology there is no way the government can fully control the internet...". According to Liu Qing, a dissident and former prisoner who now lives in exile and chairs Human Rights in China, "People in China now understand a lot more about what's going on than when I was there in the '70s and '80s. Then, the only contact we had with the outside world was through meeting the very occasional foreigner or somehow getting hold of a foreign paper or magazine."
George Orwell illustrated the importance to tyrannies of control over information in his novel, '1984'. One hopes that through the internet the Chinese people will continue to increase their understanding of the world as it actually is, in contrast with the world as their political masters would have it. In so doing, the Chinese people can hope to free themselves.
Posted by publius at January 30, 2004 05:12 PM