JOURNAL: Chinese Exceptionalism

The great part about being a Chinese dictatorship in a world with one rule set (Adam Smith's), is that your paramilitary forces can slaughter 140 156 protestors without even a whimper from the global community.  Western political elites just don't care because a) business with China is more important than human rights and b) China reacts like a spoiled child when chastised, which makes it not worth the hassle.   Of course, the reaction we see today on Chinese repression may become the same we see when similar things happen in the developed world.  

What's even more interesting is how the opposition is using the information terrain to help get the message out.  From twitter (like Iran) to cell phone cameras, the images of the event were broadcast around the world.  China's response?  A combination of "shutdowns" of information systems and counter attacks by loyalist information militias.  While the opposition is learning how to use information terrain better with each incident (this response was faster than what happened when China cracked down on Tibet), it still hasn't branched out into using those same tools to spread disruption (which is the only effective way to disconnect).

Comments

[PRCalDude]

Can you post a link to the "slaughter" you're talking about?

My guess is that it's a slaughter of 140 Muslim Uighurs that you're speaking, and Western governments have less sympathy for them because of all of the problems Muslims cause in France, Germany, the UK, the US, Canada, Sweden, etc. The Muslims are perpetually aggrieved and perpetually the source of their own problems because they're always at the throats of the indidels per Surahs 9:5 and 9:29.

[Sherwood Smith]

John you have touched again on an interesting subject.. The Western Elites.. The Western Elite have abandoned their own countries and cultures with businesses and residences around the globe. The don't care what happens in any country, even their own; for they are only one ticket away from their other homes.

I will go a step farther and say this: The Ruling Elite thanks to useless and destructive government rules and regulations can now completely and legally loot any public corporations via stock options, grants, special expense accounts, merger fees, inside deals, nepotism, special exit contracts and extremely fat contracts to protect their incompetence.

So they loot public corporations, buy houses and assets all around the world.. and move around like a housefly as necessity requires.. with no regards for their own race, cultures, or fellow men.. except of course their fellows in the Ruling Elite...

All are now disposable in the global world of the Western Elite.

Sherwood Smith

[Evil Rocks]

It's scary being a proletariat when the whole bureaucratic engine is against you. Americans like to believe that we don't live in a police state, but we haven't had a good reason to get upset in a few decades either.

If we choose the wrong topics to get fluffed about, the elites will quash us as quickly as they do in China - I cite the enlistment of local police forces to enforce federal immigration rules.

[jukic]

Contrast U.S. media coverage of Iran with that of the slaughter in Xinjian Province. The Iranian protestors are being characterized as "freedom fighters"(they want to be like us), while the Ugyurs are being completely ignored, although the slaughter is of a greater magnitude.

[Duncan Kinder]

"Western elites just don't care "

Define "elite."

I take it that global guerrillas are not "elite"; while talking heads on CNN are?

[JR]

Duncan, was thinking more in terms of political elites.

[ChristianK]

Elite = The kind of people who go or would be able to get an invitation to Bilderberg, Davos, Aspen Institute Seminars or who are members of the Council of Foreign Relations.

[Björn]

Hold your horses. Do we know these people were killed by the security apparatus?

Do we know how many victims are Han and how many Uigurs?

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/ethnic_clashes_in_urumqi_china.html

Seems more like a typical problem in an overcrowded world, with China being a top exporter of excess population.

[Duncan Kinder]

"Elite = The kind of people who go or would be able to get an invitation to Bilderberg, Davos, Aspen Institute Seminars or who are members of the Council of Foreign Relations."

OK, I think I've got it.

Shorty Guzman is not a member of the elite even though he made the Forbes list of billionaires. However, the banksters from Goldman Sachs are.

[The Dark Avenger]

It looks like they're demonstrating a learning curve:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/08/international/i125423D92.DTL

Journalists from 60 different foreign media organizations traveled to Urumqi Monday. They were taken to the largest hotel in town where the government had set up a media center. Special reporting passes were issued and press conferences were arranged.

The hotel was the only place in town where Internet service was not cut, which helped ensure that reporters stayed close.

Still, not everything stayed within the government's control. On Tuesday, as reporters were escorted around town to see the damage from Sunday's rioting, a group of some 200 Uighur women, wailing and shouting, appeared to protest the arrests of their husbands and sons in the ensuing crackdown.

For the government guides, who tried to herd reporters on buses as TV cameras rolled, it was a totally unscripted moment.

Despite the access, foreign journalists still reported problems in the field. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said it had received reports of security forces detaining TV crews and other reporters, confiscating equipment, and even damaging a video camera. Two Associated Press Television producers were detained for more than three hours and questioned about their reporting. Their equipment was returned and eventually they were taken back to the media hotel.

Within China, the government has been working hard to control the information on this week's violence. State media remains under tight supervision while mobile phone service along with Internet access in Urumqi has been sharply curtailed. Meanwhile, China's Internet censors were scrubbing videos and text updates about the riots from China-based social networking sites such as Youku, a YouTube-like service, and Fanfou, a Chinese Web site similar to Twitter.

The riots exposed the long-simmering tensions between the minority Uighurs and majority Han Chinese and echoed last year's unrest in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. The rioters, mostly Uighurs, rampaged through the streets, overturning barricades, attacking vehicles and buildings, and clashing with police. State television aired footage showing protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Victims who appeared to be Han Chinese sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.

"If they try to suppress coverage, then the foreign media writes its own stories ... whereas here, they can encourage foreign media to understand their view better," said David Zweig, director of the Center on China's Transnational Relations at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"By taking people to see it, they can make the case that there was violence by Uighurs. Otherwise, people won't write that story," he said.

OTOH

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1716069/chinese_citizens_use_internet_to_spread_censored_riot_footage/index.html

Chinese Citizens Use Internet To Spread Censored Riot Footage

Posted on: Monday, 6 July 2009, 11:50 CDT

Twitter, YouTube and other Internet forums filtered out independent information about deadly riots in China's remote northwest on Monday, frustrating government efforts to control the news, AFP reported.

Officials said the unrest on Sunday left at least 140 people dead while the communist authorities who built the so-called ‘Great Firewall of China’ raced to stamp out video, images and words posted by Internet users who reported on the incident.

Late Monday afternoon, Twitter and YouTube appeared to be blocked in China, while leading Chinese search engines would not give results for "Urumqi", the city in Xinjiang where the riots started.

The official version of events, which blamed the unrest on ethnic Muslim Uighurs, was carried out by traditional press in China.

However, pictures, videos and updates from Urumqi poured onto social networking and image sharing websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

Other Internet users on sites outside China posted some items to preserve the content, while Twitter helped link people around the globe to images Chinese authorities wanted to censor.

One U.S. academic in Urumqi reported via Twitter that security forces were blocking off streets in the city hours before the mainstream news organizations reported the unrest on Sunday night.

Just before midday on Monday, state-run China Central Television showed its first images of the violence more than 12 hours after footage began circulating on the Internet.

Images of a woman apparently being kicked as she lay on the ground, protesters throwing stones at police, vehicles on fire, and two young girls with bloodied hands comforting each other were broadcast on CCTV.

Such footage gave a contrasted impression to some of the clips on YouTube that Uighur exile groups said defended their case that the protesters were mostly peaceful.

YouTube footage showed what appeared to be a peaceful protest, with men and women marching, chatting on mobile phones, sipping bottled water and cheering as they marched.

Other YouTube video that was apparently taken by low-grade video technology in Urumqi showed police in black helmets leading away handcuffed protesters.

Some Chinese Internet users were able to express frustration at having their postings on the violence deleted.

Chinese blogger Wen Ni'er reposted this entry on a Google site: “Chinese mainland websites repeatedly deleted my post, which seriously violated China's law and violated my freedom and rights. I hereby want to express my strong disgust and condemnation.”

Anonymous sites based outside of China, such as drop.io/urumuqi, were aggregating and saving both official and non-official materials about the incident.

The site's operator wrote that they were saved primarily because they might not be seen again once the Chinese censors order a take-down.

“Indeed, since I saved them, many of these pictures were 'harmonized' and can no longer be accessed,” the operator posted.

The real problem the Chinese have is that the Orwell's "Memory Hole" can't be operational any more, and the attempt to create a Great Firewall will work about as well as the Maginot line did to defend the French from the Germans.

[AAA]

It seems doubtful since the government is paying millions, if it was 156 Uighurs, the government is not obligated to pay, at least not as much. They are however required to pay if it is Han as most were moved there by the government. I suggest you stick to facts in the future, which I suspect you have none other than your own opinion, we have enough opinions out there, what people want is more facts not more trolling! goddamn internet troll.

[Brent Bigelow]

If those Muslim Uighurs killed 156 white Americans, I would hope that we Americans would be just as tough as the Chinese are right now.

[ellis]

China has evolved beyond what Western culture still refuses to accept: harsh government oversight combined with capitalistic competition truly does (right or wrong) generate the best of both worlds, that is, ensures if not insists on absolute economic performance minus personal feelings painfully tiresome distractions.

In terms of Internet restrictions, that is, filtering of unflattering (government) information there's a simple application of the standard bell curve: what profit is there in introducing doubt or controversy in the mind of the average worker/producer when they're barely capable of recognising or otherwise correcting their most undermining habits...can the average American "on a diet" even resist that 2nd donut?

In the simplest of terms: the average worker or even owner of capital is a doer purely motivated by greed/personal gain. Any tolerance outside these parameters is, quite simply, impractical as "they" know not what "they" think they understand or even protest.

The Chinese version of capitalism is offensive for a very simple reason: it strictly prohibits that human element...that part of the Americana which celebrates the Father or Mothers right to have a another beer, order a pizza, yet still get up for work the next morning and work another shift.

What we refuse to accept as a culture: our top 5% still trounces Chinese imitation and their ability to steal or clone our best innovations yet we, especially during the W years, hated if not attempted to exterminate our top 5%.

[ellis]

Western political elites just don't care because a) business with China is more important than human rights and b) China reacts like a spoiled child when chastised, which makes it not worth the hassle.

Please check the statistics on Congressional nepotism, that is, generation after generation of Congressional oversight by sons, daughters, grandsons, etc.

Our so-called representative Democracy has NEVER worked a "real" job nor comprehends the demands of the real job market and as an Oracle DBA, Java programmer, and even *Nix administrator I can fully attest to the very simple reality we are losing the war with every single individual above "Middle Management" both in government and in the private sector being entirely disconnected, that is, they have no violent bias against competency yet, rathter, have to comprehension of what the modern day term/job requirements even are or mean.

We are ruled by a governing class, both in DC and in Fortune 500 America (in this "modern age" there being virtually no difference) which has no concept of the economic or foreign policy cure because for more than 2 generations they have been artificially separated from the disease...they are incapable of solving what they haven't even begun to comprehend.

To break for one moment from the abstract: Obama creating a cyber-warfare department with our top experts commenting "better late than never" with the most recent example being the complete technological paralysis of South Korea.

[ellis]

In your next post, assuming I didn't overlook a prior submission on your part, please research and comment on when China started building/training their cyber-warfare department as to my knowledge it was more than 20 years ago.

[lau su]

This is a nice examples of cia and western troublemaker , the cia are making an other ,,divide and conquer,,(the same as in balkan).China is a superpower, be afraid, and i'm very happy fo that.China is talking back what was tooken from them by force,.If China loose Xinjiang, it's no acces to the oil and gaz field in Turk.Kazak.China is more smarter then anybody,need oil and gaz make a deal. USA nedd oil and gaz they kill and destroy everything, torture? who is not doing(usa, GB, France verybody doing in they war on terror,with a fake ennemie.so i'm just laughing at your comment.Can you locate Cina on the map???,And even more can you locate Xinjiang on it(here is a clue it's not beside Australia)

[lau su]

This is a nice examples of cia and western troublemaker , the cia are making an other ,,divide and conquer,,(the same as in balkan).China is a superpower, be afraid, and i'm very happy fo that.China is talking back what was tooken from them by force,.If China loose Xinjiang, it's no acces to the oil and gaz field in Turk.Kazak.China is more smarter then anybody,need oil and gaz make a deal. USA nedd oil and gaz they kill and destroy everything, torture? who is not doing(usa, GB, France verybody doing in they war on terror,with a fake ennemie.so i'm just laughing at your comment.Can you locate Cina on the map???,And even more can you locate Xinjiang on it(here is a clue it's not beside Australia)

[JR]

Nice example above, of Chinese cyber militia. From my read of the story, paramilitary forces fired on Uighur protestors which drove the protest into a riot. Most of the dead are likely of that minority.

[Marcello]

"Of course, the reaction we see today on Chinese repression may become the same we see when similar things happen in the developed world."

With the caveat that I don't know the details or local story of the area...

When it boils down to it basic order and general safety must always come before "human rights", "democracy" and all that stuff. And in any case without the former the latter are meaningless.
You simply cannot afford to give in to every troublemaker, ethnic separatists or whatever, because the end result is going to be a shithole.
Sometimes the State may have to use an iron fist against such threats,including machine gunning rioters if need be.

[Jay Taber]

The crackdown on Uyghurs in China, like the systematic brutality of Israel toward Palestinians, betrays the promise of universal human rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. More recently, subsuming freedom to power betrays the specific extension of human rights to indigenous peoples by the UN in 2007.

While international law is on their side, indigenous peoples only hope in surmounting the anti-indigenous axis of state institutions, markets, and transnational criminal enterprise, is pan-tribal global solidarity, with support from civil society.

As the leading member of the anti-indigenous axis, the United States has already sided with China and Israel in crushing self-determination. As conflicts over resources related to energy and climate change escalate, murderous regimes like Colombia, Nigeria and Indonesia can count on the US for money and arms to continue the genocide of indigenous peoples.

[Jimini]

Heard an excellent debate piece on NPR on the ride home yesterday on this same subject. Surprisingly, I found myself coming down on the side of the Chinese, following the USSR/Russian logic that too much freedom thrust too quickly on a large population is simply too much for either the government or the governed to handle. On further reflection, I wondered why this isn't immediately intuitive to anyone who gave it any thought. The whole global capitalism idea has been a bitch, even for many/most of the populace in the first world. Why in the world would anyone think it wouldn't be many times worse for the third, especially when you consider their populations dwarf our own?

[DaShui]

I lived in Xinjiang 8 months. The greatest place on the planet. Hospitality is incrediable (Hans too). I feel like there is a civil war going on inside me. It's wrong to frame it as a Muslim rebellion. Xinjiang also has Hui and Kazak and Kyrgitz who are all Muslim, but support the Hans, because they are afraid they will be kicked out of Xinjiang if the Uyghurs seize power.

The Hans tell me that the Uyghurs and Tibetians should be grateful that they bring development. The irony is that is what the west and Japan said when they built Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dalian, Taiwan and other places? That shuts the Hans up.
There is not enough water in Xinjiang anyway to support industrial development or modern agriculture.

[dagezhu]

"harsh government oversight combined with capitalistic competition truly does (right or wrong) generate the best of both worlds, that is, ensures if not insists on absolute economic performance minus personal feelings
...
I can fully attest to the very simple reality we are losing the war with every single individual above "Middle Management" both in government and in the private sector being entirely disconnected, that is, they have no violent bias against competency yet, rathter, have to comprehension of what the modern day term/job requirements even are or mean. "

Ellis, if you have a blog, link to it so I can read it.

And if you don't have a blog, you should start a blog at your earliest convenience.

I disagree about the Chinese having no personal feelings and distractions. Chinese are very emotional, IMHO, but they're also collectivist, not individualist.

[The Dark Avenger]

When it boils down to it basic order and general safety must always come before "human rights", "democracy" and all that stuff. And in any case without the former the latter are meaningless.
You simply cannot afford to give in to every troublemaker, ethnic separatists or whatever, because the end result is going to be a shithole.
Sometimes the State may have to use an iron fist against such threats,including machine gunning rioters if need be.

The current regime in Iran could use someone like you on their side, how's your Farsi these days?

[Marcello]

"The current regime in Iran could use someone like you on their side, how's your Farsi these days?"

The USSR of the late 80's tried the western Pollyanna approach of giving in to almost every ethnic separatism and democratizing without the necessary socio economic foundations.
They haven't finished with picking up the pieces yet.
Perhaps a lot of that was unavoidable due to the economic structure but if the chinese have managed to avoid that chaos even only partly by machine gunning the occasional riot every now and then, that's a small price to pay.

[The Dark Avenger]

The USSR of the late 80's tried the western Pollyanna approactism and democratizing without the necessary socio economic foundations.

No, the problem was that Gorbachov in attempting to repair a system that began to resemble the infamous "One-horse Shay":

While Gorbachev's political initiatives were positive for freedom and democracy in the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies, the economic policy of his government gradually brought the country close to disaster. By the end of the 1980s, severe shortages of basic food supplies (meat, sugar) led to the reintroduction of the war-time system of distribution using food cards that limited each citizen to a certain amount of product per month. Compared to 1985, the state deficit grew from 0 to 109 billion rubles; gold funds decreased from 2,000 to 200 tons; and external debt grew from 0 to 120 billion dollars.

..........................

Furthermore, the democratisation of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had irreparably undermined the power of the CPSU and Gorbachev himself. The relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more political openness had the unintended effect of re-awakening long-suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the Soviet republics. Calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder, especially in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold in Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In December 1986, the first signs of the nationalities problem that would haunt the later years of the Soviet Union's existence surfaced as riots, named Jeltoqsan, occurred in Alma Ata and other areas of Kazakhstan after Dinmukhamed Kunayev was replaced as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Nationalism would then surface in Russia in May 1987, as 600 members of Pamyat, a nascent Russian nationalist group, demonstrated in Moscow and were becoming increasingly linked to Boris Yeltsin, who received their representatives at a meeting.[5]

Glasnost hastened awareness of the national sovereignty problem. The free flow of information had been so completely suppressed for so long in the Soviet Union that many of the ruling class had all but forgotten that the Soviet Union was an empire conquered through military force and consolidated by the persecution of millions of people, and not a union voluntarily entered into by local populations. Thus, the extremity of local desire for independent control of their own affairs took these leaders by surprise, and the leaders were unprepared for the depth of the long pent-up feelings that were released.

Violence erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh - an Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan - between February and April, when Armenians living in the area began a new wave of protests over the arbitrary transfer of the historically Armenian region from Armenia to Azerbaijan in 1920 upon Joseph Stalin's decision.[17] Gorbachev imposed a temporary solution, but it did not last, as fresh trouble arose in Nagorno-Karabakh between June and July. Turmoil would once again return in late 1988, this time in Armenia itself, when the Leninakan Earthquake hit the region on 7 December. Poor local infrastructure magnified the hazard and some 25,000 people died.[5] Gorbachev was forced to break off his trip to the U.S. and cancel planned travels to Cuba and Britain.[5]

In March and April 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies took place throughout the Soviet Union. This returned many pro-independence republicans, as many CPSU candidates were rejected. The televised Congress debates allowed the dissemination of pro-independence propositions. Indeed, 1989 would see numerous nationalistic expressions protests. Initiated by the Baltic republics in January, laws were passed in most non-Russian republics giving precedence for the republican language over Russian. 9 April would see the crackdown of nationalist demonstrations by Soviet troops in Tbilisi. There would be further bloody protests in Uzbekistan in June, where Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks clashed in Fergana. Apart from this violence, three major events that altered the face of the nationalities issue occurred in 1989. Estonia had declared its sovereignty in November, 1988, to be followed by Lithuania in May 1989 and by Latvia in July (the Communist Party of Lithuania would also declare its independence from the CPSU in December). This brought the Union and the republics into clear confrontation and would form a precedent for other republics.

Following this, in July, on the eve of the anniversary of the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, it was formally revealed that the treaty did indeed include a plan for the annexation of the Baltic countries into the USSR (as happened in 1940) and the division of Poland between the two countries. The unsavory past was exposed and gave impetus to the peoples of the Baltic countries who could now even more legitimately claim that they were subject to oppression. Finally, the Eastern bloc collapsed in the autumn of 1989, raising hopes that Gorbachev would extend his non-interventionist doctrine to the internal workings of the USSR.[5]

Of course, it didn't help that the DDR would got into a positive feedback loop by increasing the # of agents who went to anti-government meetings, which emboldened people to go to them in greater numbers, etc.

that chaos even only partly by machine gunning the occasional riot every now and then, that's a small price to pay.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs12-2009jul12,0,477279.story

China released a breakdown of the death toll from communal rioting, saying most of the 184 killed were Han, the majority Chinese ethnic group -- an announcement that only fueled suspicion among Turkic Muslim Uighurs that the toll is distorted.

The New China News Agency said 137 victims of the violence in the western Xinjiang region were Han, 46 were Uighurs and one was a Hui, another Muslim group.

Uighurs on the streets of the Xinjiang regional capital, Urumqi, and exiled activists disputed the figures, saying many more Uighurs died. They cited persistent
rumors that security forces fired on Uighurs during the July 5 protest and on subsequent days.

Dispelling such suspicions has become another challenge for the government as it tries to calm the troubled region and win over critics in the international community.

Turkey, whose people share an ethnic and cultural bond with the Uighurs, has been particularly critical of the crackdown.

And it would seem that the attempt to control the Internet is falling behind and as the Chinese government gets behind the curve, there is this concept that they fail to understand, which I encapsulated a while back:

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/05/the-bubble.html?cid=6a00d83451576d69e2011570800144970b#comment-6a00d83451576d69e2011570800144970b

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13917484

It has yet to be decided whether Green Dam must be pre-loaded, or left on a disk for users to install. But it has sparked an uproar. Chinese internet users have vented online their spleen at being nannied. Hackers are reported to have mounted repeated attacks on the website of Green Dam’s developer. It has also received more than 1,000 harassing phone-calls, including death threats.

An American firm, Solid Oak Software, claims Green Dam includes stolen copyrighted code from one of its products, and has launched legal action. Computer makers are understandably reluctant to abet a massive censorship scheme, or to anger their customers with unwelcome software. Moreover, independent experts at the University of Michigan found Green Dam to be riddled with outdated code and security flaws that would leave computers at risk.

America’s Commerce Department this week lodged a formal complaint with the Chinese government, asking it to rescind the new rule. The government stresses Green Dam’s role in protecting young people from “unhealthy” and “poisonous” pornographic and violent content. But the Michigan experts found that it is also scans text for “politically sensitive” phrases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/technology/01china.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1247385670-EJynQgRNasm2hL4NsKgGWg

The delay by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was announced through Xinhua, the official news agency, one day before the July 1 deadline for the software to be installed on all computers sold in China.

The software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, has caused a torrent of protests from both Chinese computer users and global computer makers, including many in the United States, since the government order became public in early June.

The Obama administration has officially warned China that the requirement could violate free-trade agreements, and sent trade officials to Beijing recently to press the government to rescind the decision. In Beijing on Tuesday, a United States Embassy spokesman said Washington welcomed the announcement.

China has said the software is designed to filter out pornography and violence to protect minors, but many experts say it can also block any other content that the authorities deem subversive.

The ministry said the mandatory installation would be delayed for an indefinite period to give computer producers more time to put the order into effect.

As a practical matter, the abrupt postponement bows to reality because most of China’s computer retailers have large stocks of machines, manufactured months before the decree was announced, that have yet to be sold. Many global computer makers have declined to say how they would comply with the requirement, apparently hoping that the government would delay or reverse its decision under international pressure.

The filtering software has been the object of furious online debate since the requirement to install it was disclosed. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which licensed the technology from two Chinese developers, says the software automatically blocks Web surfers from seeing “unhealthy Internet content.” Updated lists of banned content are automatically downloaded onto users’ computers from the developers’ servers.

But the software’s current list of banned words, posted online by Chinese hackers, is laced with political topics. Businesses have complained that the software is so poorly designed that it opens computers not just to government snooping, but also to hacker attacks by vandals and criminals.

On Friday, the leaders of 22 international business organizations delivered a letter to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arguing that Green Dam flouted China’s professed goal of building an information-based society, and that it threatened security, privacy and free speech. A day earlier, the European Union protested that the software was clearly designed to limit free speech.

and it hasn't always ended well for the Dear Leader:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEZHZHNByCs

[Marcello]

"No, the problem was that Gorbachov in attempting to repair a system that began to resemble the infamous "One-horse Shay"

Gorbachev economic policies were misguided, but imitating successful chinese policies, (to the extent this could have been possible given the structural difference) as opposite to his hodge podge required keeping the lid on the political front anyway. The degree of integration of the USSR economy was very high and the political disintegration was a pretty big nail in the coffin, disrupting everything from industrial supply chains to the electric grid. This could not have been tulerated even on a "chinese" path.

[The Dark Avenger]

Gorbachev economic policies were misguided, but imitating successful chinese policies, (to the extent this could have been possible given the structural difference) as opposite to his hodge podge required keeping the lid on the political front anyway. The degree of integration of the USSR economy was very high and the political disintegration was a pretty big nail in the coffin

The problem is that he couldn't keep the other countries in line as they did in Hungary in the 50s and Czechoslovakia in the 60s by sending in tanks, so that in turn encouraged countrie to break free of the Soviet Union's poisonous embrace, and as the old WWI song goes, "How can you keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Gay Paree(Paris)?" would apply to the nationalities as well.

To emphasize further that the cyber-wars ahead will neither be won or lost with machine-guns, consider

1: By eschewing openness in their computer-systems while attempting to regulate the contacts between the world-wide network with virtual borders to their own, they are actually sabotaging their own efforts, much as the "cover-up" nature of the fictional Boskonian Empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman

sowed its' own seeds of doom, by denying adequate information to the Eddorians of their opponents until it was too late.

2. I have a cousin who as a bank employee in the 1960s gained a great deal of experience with computers because she was the one left to install and maintain them at her workplace.

She predicted years ago that the Chinese wouldn't be able to keep a lid on the Internet, and so far, she seems to be on the money with her foresight.

Have you read the Lensman series, JR? It's been said to demonstrate the OODA loop on several occasions, any thought would be appreciated in a future thread.

[Marcello]

"The problem is that he couldn't keep the other countries in line as they did in Hungary in the 50s and Czechoslovakia in the 60s by sending in tanks, so that in turn encouraged countrie to break free of the Soviet Union's poisonous embrace, and as the old WWI song goes, "How can you keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Gay Paree(Paris)?" would apply to the nationalities as well."

Very superficial and broad brush, although it may pass as conventional wisdom in the West.
It overlooks that disintegration did not start from the bottom, it was initiated at the top by dismatling what kept the system together.
Yes, most of the Warsaw Pact countries, the Baltics and some other spots wanted to get out ASAP. Most of the USSR proper, not as much. When they did it was more taking an opportunity and leaving an house which was already falling.
In a lot of cases it was just the local petty tyrant taking the opportunity to carve up his own fiefdom to rule as he saw fit, a place that had never existed as independent state before it was a soviet republic.
Most of these last minute nationalists would have stayed put had the leadership of the USSR chosen a different path. The economic issue might have doomed that regardless but the political side was still pretty manageable within most of the USSR proper.

[The Dark Avenger]

It overlooks that disintegration did not start from the bottom, it was initiated at the top by dismatling what kept the system together

Solidarity started in the early '80s, how was that initiated at the top?

Also the Human rights issue was used to chip away at the internal order, the way John wrote about American use of torture a while, the problem was that the USSR was like the proverbial dinosaur, by the time the negative feedback,(or pain) got to the center of the organism, the ability to take corrective action had already past.

I agree with you about Chinese economic policies, I think the long-term mistake the Chinese have made was not continuing some form of "the iron rice bowl" a policy Mao formed to combat the bouts of famine that periodically afflict the Yang-tze valley and other places in China. Feed the people, and they have one less reason to turn on you.

[Marcello]

"Solidarity started in the early '80s, how was that initiated at the top?"

I will repeat what I wrote above

"Yes, most of the Warsaw Pact countries, the Baltics and some other spots wanted to get out ASAP. Most of the USSR proper, not as much. When they did it was more taking an opportunity and leaving an house which was already falling."

1) Solidarity was, by itself, just an other episode in an history of "rebellions" in the Warsaw Pact and it was at least somewhat contained by Jaruzelski repression.

2) Within the USSR proper, save the Baltics and few others spots, there was nothing comparable in terms of nationalist "Break away from Moscow" sentiment.

Latvia an Poland could be kept in with a gun to their heads (And occasionally pulling the trigger too).

Belarus and Uzbekistan, probably Ukraine too were very different matters. Independence in these countries was not something long sought after by the majority, it was more something that just happened because the top had been busy smashing everything that kept the system in place.

[Marcello]

"Latvia an Poland could be kept in with a gun to their heads"

That should have been

"Latvia an Poland could be kept in ONLY with a gun to their heads"