﻿ China's right to demonstrate no such thing as absolute online freedom | ZDNet

China's right to demonstrate no such thing as absolute online freedom
















No such thing as absolute freedom of expression




China bloggers











Topics: Censorship, Government Asia, China





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  • Freedom just flew away

    Excellent story, Eileen.

    In China, you can get arrested for spreading untruths. But in the United States, you can get arrested for telling the truth.

    Apart from what happened to Snowden, look at the recent press conference by the CEOs of Yahoo and Facebook. They said that they could not even mention the extent of government eavesdropping or they could be arrested themselves. Just for talking about it! Just for telling the truth about what the government is doing.

    Can anyone really call that freedom?
    • Ten cent army

      Are you one of those bloggers they Chinese government hires to put up disinformation? In China, if two internet CEOs complained about how they are hardwired in to domestic surveillance programs or how they , if anyone wrote about it, or if anyone tried to read it, they'd all be in jail. But that would never happen becuase the CPC has complete control, an army of censors, and texts editors what they can and cannot write about. Call that freedom? You need to re-read Animal Farm.

    Eileen Yu the 50 cent voter doing the chinese communist regime shilling.

    Pathetic shina apologist
  • Absolutes and Freedom

    No freedom of any kind is unlimited. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." All rights are limited to actions that do not violate the rights of others. Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to slander. Freedom to make copies of DVDs does not include making copies of DVDs that contain copyrighted material. Of course, piracy is rampant in China.

    Freedom of expression also does not include the right to distribute materials that have been obtained illegally. I believe that is what Bradley Manning is accused of, and Edward Snowden as well.

    The problem in China, though, is that the Chinese government simply cannot be trusted. With no free press in China, all government officials are corrupt by definition. So China does not need laws protecting government officials from slander. They are all guilty by definition. If China were a country governed by the rule of objective law, we could have an intelligent conversation about Chinese internet slander laws. I don't think much of the Chinese government, so I have to assume that the slander laws are just a pretext for arresting people who are critical of government. With no free press to shed sunlight on government abuses, how will we ever know.

    Please don't write articles saying "China may of done X, but the US did Y, so China must not be that bad!" Both China and the US should be judged against objective criteria of what is just and what isn't. The US isn't perfect by any stretch, but we still have a free (if incompetent) press. Try again when China frees its press.
  • They don't equate

    Trying to compare the two as the same is like looking at a rowboat and a cargo ship and saying "they're both boats".

    I definitely have my problems around the censorship that the US government tries to impose but as long as the Great Firewall stays in place, any attempts to compare information restriction in the US and China are ludicrous.
  • Known untruths vs whistleblowers

    China monitors their citizens use of the internet - (rule 1 of masterminds of the obvious).

    China dislikes disrupters of the social harmony.

    If you accuse someone of corruption in China, you better have a video of it taking place.

    US government dislikes whistleblowers that embarrass the US governments ability to spy on its citizens or disclose its military mistakes. Despite the precedence of the leak of the classified Pentagon Papers by NYT and their exoneration by the Supreme court.

    If freedom of the press is paramount? Is it free to print all the time, or only sometimes? What is the least untruthful answer the government can say?

    In 2013 survey, 75% of republicans and 40% of Dems, regard the US government as a threat to their rights and freedoms. So how is this freedom of the press doing for our comfort with government?
    • Incompetence

      A free press is no panacea or guarantee of the preservation of other freedoms. The mainstream press in the United States is massively biased in favor of the Left, plus they are in bed with the politicians. They go to the same cocktail parties. But the truth is available through Internet media. The US government is currently a major threat to our rights and freedoms (e.g., Obamacare), so 25% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats need to wake up and smell the coffee.
  • People spread unsubstantiated rumors...

    ...on a regular basis and have for millenia. People even do it right here on ZDNet. I even have good reason to believe that some of them are even spread by functionaries of political parties such as the one that rules China.

    It's possible that the Comrades in Beijing are simply trying to protect innocent people's reputations, but I doubt that even then they would go so far as to prosecute rumor spreading that makes them look good.
    John L. Ries
  • Who decides what is true?

    In a society with free speech and a free press, the truth or falsity of a report is left up to the readers of the report. In a society with major restrictions on speech and press, it is left up to the government to decide what is "true" (i.e. following the government line) or "false" (contradicting the government line.) If the government suppresses any ideas it disapproves of, the opportunity for the readers to decide whether a report is true or false has been taken away.

    The actions of the United States government against Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are a violation of what has theoretically been a part of our society since the Bill of Rights.

    Granted that officials in all levels of government in the United States have violated those fundamental principles, institutions such as the Supreme Court have (at least sometimes) defended those principles even when they are violated by government officials.

    We also have competing power bases in the US government (big business, small business, labor, environmental protection, multiple religious groups, anti-religious groups, farmers, scientists, engineers, etc.). When the government is not monolithic, violations of human rights by government officials "owned" by one power block are continually challenged by government officials "owned" by another power block. The system is obviously not perfect, but it has mechanisms that allow it to improve.

    Putting all the power to decide what speech and what press releases are acceptable in the hands of one group is asking for trouble, and that is what has resulted every time that has been done. Although human reasoning abilities are, have been, and will probably always be limited, I think that it is safer to let individuals look at MULTIPLE viewpoints and decide for themselves what is true.

    I do, however, agree with the safeguards of slander and libel laws that can carry penalties for people who KNOWINGLY and MALICIOUSLY publish falsehoods about other individual human beings. The idea of "slander of the state" and "slander of a corporation" are illegitimate and should not be a part of any legal system.