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by veidr
1039 days ago
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Rethink your take. Censorship is when the government prevents you from saying or publishing what you want. The government's ability to do that ultimately stems from the threat of force/violence. China's ways of doing this might seem crude to somebody in the US or EU, but boil down to the same thing. If you continue to disobey either of those government's orders to stop doing something, they will send men with guns to pick you up and lock you in a cage, literally preventing you from traveling anywhere. That's why censorship is a terrible thing in a purportedly free society, and discussions like this are why mis-application of the word "censorship" to mean things like "waaaah walmart.com refused to broadcast my tweet about how trans people should be beaten up" is also bad. |
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But I will stick to my guns that there is much more at stake for people in China that don't behave in the way the government wants them to than just being censored. 'to stop doing something' is doing the heavy lifting in your comment and what the 'something' is can be limited to media expressions and then I would agree it is censorship. But this goes much further than that: it is not just what you write. It is also how you behave, and about what your ancestry is, which activities you are allowed to engage in (and which activities you have to engage in).
Censorship is just about expression. This is full-on coercion, anti-LGBT policy and racism. To make it explicit.