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by frenchy 3251 days ago
And yet using a VPN is still somehow "against the will of the people" ...
1 comments

You'll notice the same usernames and patterns of argumentation every time there is an article with comments remotely criticizing (or even questioning) China.
Some quite interesting "opinions" on that ones comment history.
There are honestly a lot of similar patterns of argumentation, attack, deflection, and amplification that I've noticed across these platforms whenever China is mentioned; as a native Chinese speaker, vast populations of Chinese internet communities and social media services are pretty unreadable to me because you see the same dozen arguments by Chinese netizens unfolding over and over again. His/her assumption that my response is attacking "free speech" is a pretty common response I see, where any attempt at discussing or criticizing Chinese policy is redirected toward some aspect of liberal democratic values, regardless if the original commenter is a "westerner" or whether or not it even fits in the context/scope of the original question.
From reading through some of the China threads you came upon, I'm not really sure if you are really familiar with the concept of "free".
you = he

...it was late.

So far, most of my comments regarding those "criticizing/questioning" China stuff are mostly about the censorship/GFW, because I strongly believe the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector.

Am I allowed to have my own opinion on that matter when I am a Chinese living in China working in that sector? Maybe your definition of freedom/free speech is a pretty censored one?

> the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector.

How do you reconcile this belief with the following:

1) The GFW blocks sites and content related to dissident groups and individuals in China, such as Xinjiang and Tibetan independence groups.

2) The GFW blocks sites and content related to Falun Gong.

3) Personal VPN usage will be blocked.

4) Many foreign news sites are blocked.

1. illegal organisations by Chinese laws.

2. illegal organisation by Chinese laws. btw, they spam my mobile all the time, it is pretty rude to call someone's mobile 5-6am on a weekend morning to play prerecorded message like "CCP is bad, they jailed many Falun Gong members".

3. "will" is a very interesting term. Posting here using VPN, let me know when it is actually blocked.

4. I read CNN/BBC/Foxnews quite often, they are not blocked, no VPN required.

> 1. illegal organisations by Chinese laws.

>2. illegal organisation by Chinese laws. btw, they spam my mobile all the time, it is pretty rude to call someone's mobile 5-6am on a weekend morning to play prerecorded message like "CCP is bad, they jailed many Falun Gong members".

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the belief you stated in your OP:

>> I strongly believe the GFW is a protectionism tool to protect and grew the Chinese Internet sector.

> 3. "will" is a very interesting term. Posting here using VPN, let me know when it is actually blocked.

From CNN[0]:

> Beijing said in January it would restrict virtual private networks, or VPNs, and this month reportedly told the three big telecoms companies to block individuals' access to them by early next year.

Companies are already pulling out of the VPN market in China. You might be familiar with this given the thread we're replying to.

> 4. I read CNN/BBC/Foxnews quite often, they are not blocked, no VPN required.

Le Monde, WSJ, NYT, Reuters, The Economist and TIME are blocked[1]. The NYT and BBC have gone through periods of being blocked and unblocked over the past decade.

--

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/25/technology/china-vpn-censors...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

no one ever denied the fact of internet censorship in China. the point is that the biggest impact of GFW is the block of sites like Google/fb/twitter and its largely for protectionism.

blocking WSJ is bad, really bad, but let's be honest, how many Chinese would be reading WSJ? 0.1%? Sure, that 0.1% still counts, they should be allowed to read WSJ or Reuters, but it is not remotely comparable to the impact of blocking, say, youtube. how many Chinese would be watching youtube? I'd argue hundreds of millions could be watching.

With all these numbers in mind, and the fact that there are highly popular replacement services in China for every single one of those blocked one like google/fb/twitter, you tell me what is the primary goal.

it is also worth pointing out that blocking WSJ/Reuters and similar web sites are bad decisions, but blocking Xinjiang/Tibet independence movement sites are totally different matter.

What reason is there to block information about illegal organisations? Is information about ISIS blocked?
To be fair, we censor a lot of content distributed by such organizations.