Sunday 8 January 2012

Players & Stakeholders

There is what seems to be an infinite list of individuals as well as groups who are not only victims of this problem, but initiators as well. In the chaos of this subject four dominant forces rise: The Press, The CPC, the general population of China and Google.

The Press
This category consists of many different influences such as: Journalists, publishing laws and media. Journalists internationally feel the oppression put on them by the CPC. Chinese law currently prohibits private publishers from competing with state owned enterprises in media. Consequently, the government has a monopoly of the press and media. Anyone who violates the publishing laws can serve up to 10 years in prison. The strict protocol of publishing installed into the county’s mechanism renders it difficult to post any sort of opinion or article voicing anything different then the governmental approved messages. Currently, China has arrested more journalists than any other country. Majority of these “criminals” were not Chinese citizens, but were international journalists doing various researches. The complications arise in that “foreigners are prohibited from publishing in China”. The outsiders looking into the country’s issues are seen as anarchists and should be asked to leave the country quietly. This fear of being punished by the government causes the overwhelming censorship seen in the Chinese press.

Chinese newspaper cover

CPC
The Communist Part of China has been in power since 1949. Since that time the rules and regulations remain clear. They are to decide what sorts of information and details are allowed to be researched by the public. It is unheard of for the government to create public national discussions on the “sensitive” topics. Anyone who attempts to initiate one of those discussions is silenced by the government immediately.

The People
The largest group and the most important group of them all is the one that consists of the families, young, old, rich and poor. The general public of China deals with this issue daily whether they are aware of it or not. They are unable to research, express and believe freely. If they don’t abide by the system put in place, they suffer great consequences. Many people go by unaware that they don’t make their own decisions and that someone has stripped them of their voice. The censorship is so heavily engraved into the cultural and social attitudes that the oppression goes by unnoticed. When China signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it was promised that the people would have their freedom. Yet the people of China still cannot exercise their freedom of speech.

Google
Originally, the massive westernized search engine agreed to the conditions put in place by the CPC, in more recent events, Google has decided to remove its filters. There was a long history of unsettled publishing rights between Google and China. Google was unsold on the idea of redirecting searches and censoring such a large amount of content. This issue had come to a head in 2010 when china “had been the victim of a cyber attack that originated inside China”. Google withdrew from the Chinese public for good, leaving the people one other main search site; Baidu, another government-run website.
                                                      Baidu is the market leader for online search in China - BBC

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