Media censorship

Another peculiarity of China - media censorship. Seen with Western eyes, censorship a violation of a fundamental human right. Especially the American GLOBErs have (surprisingly) strong views against censorship, and maintain that the freedom to gather information to make an informed decision in life is one of the most important functions in developing as a person, as well as a society. Danes seem a little more indifferent, but still maintain that an autocratic ruling party should not decide what people should and should not see and listen too. (But then again, we put up with bizarre micromanagement like the Danish fat-tax, something the Americans were profoundly annoyed by).

China has one television station, CCTV, having the all-powerful right to decide what to show on television (of course as dictated by the Communist Party of China), but it has several channels, some 40 of which were variable at our hotel room. They all show the same: Chinese talk shows, Chinese movies, and a LOT of Chinese adverts (There were probably also some nature programmes in there, but when everything is in Chinese, you kind of just flip mindlessly through the channels). At one point there was Li Na's tennis match at the Australian open, but generally the options were limited. I watched the last hour of a traditional film, in part to experience the film culture of China, and in part to see if I could pick out any Mandarin words. Not bad, but with immensely long periods of silence and dramatic violins in the background, it is nothing like Hollywood.

Regarding the Internet, China has banned numerous sites such as Facebook and Youtube. But Google is allowed, and I thus had time to check my gmail. But the connection speed is dire, and since most relevant servers were far away (i.e. Europe or Hong Kong), it was a test of patience rather than a pleasant experience. Also, photos take like 10 minutes to load, so even loading BBC or Bloomberg took time.

Talking to the father of our Chinese host, I asked him whether he thought this censorship was a bad thing. He didn't think so, but for very different reasons than I expected. I assumed that the fear of free internet was to do with uprisings against the regime, such as the one in Urumqi in 2009 (which, I admit, I still have some ideas about), but the father's main concern was with the erosion of Chinese culture. I later learned from a friend that pornographic images is another concern, strictly clashing with the upbringing of Chinese children (some schools state on graduation papers from high school whether the person has been in a relationship, since that would be considered as slacking off and not fully prioritising school). But China has many loop holes, and if you want to use Facebook in China, there are ways you can. But why would you, since a Chinese company has pretty much copied the concept with the web page "Renren" (literally "People people", meaning everyone), so all your friends use that instead.

It is strange (from a Western perspective) that Chinese value heritage and culture more than individual freedom. But as the father said, China has over 1,3 billion people, hailing from very different backgrounds. Chinese are more locally minded than nationally minded, which makes sense for a European (we could never envision a United States of Europe). This difference within the population, as well as its size, makes it impossible to let people do what they want - that has been done in the past, with fragmented provinces and kingdoms fighting each other for millennia (not unlike Europe). The Chinese do have more in common than Europeans, with some +90% of the population belonging to the ethnic group of Han Chinese. The Communist Party acts as a massive lightning rod, dictating certain rules and regulations, but bringing peace, prosperity and optimism to millions. As such, the father said that Chinese democracy not only was impossible, it was not even worth aspiring to. Different background, different view points, but in some harsh way, at this stage in Chinese history, I think I agree with him.