In Tough Economic Times, Beware of the Media, China Style

Internet censorship is creeping back up in China, and the return of the old ways is curiously coinciding with a spiraling economic crisis and terrible unemployment numbers.

China has announced that "it had all the right" to censor web sites that it had allowed during the Beijing Games back in August, citing allegedly similar examples in the democratic world.

According to The New York Times, the censored sites have to do with the ever-present issue of Taiwan's right to exist, even though the Beijing spokesperson never specifically named that country.

Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at his semiweekly news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that the Chinese government had a right to censor Web sites that violated the country’s laws. He added that “some Web sites,” which he did not identify, had violated China’s law against secession by suggesting that there were two Chinas — a reference to the Beijing government’s longstanding position that mainland China and Taiwan form a single China.

“I hope that the Web sites in question will be able to self-regulate, and not do things that will violate Chinese law, and for the sake of both sides, develop conditions for Web site cooperation,” Mr. Liu said, according to a transcript posted on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site.
(...)
The government’s action comes as the Chinese economy has slowed sharply this autumn. Chinese leaders have begun cautioning about potential risks to social stability caused by high unemployment. Chinese officials have followed a pattern over the years of censoring the Internet more tightly at times of economic or political stress.

The sites involved in the latest censoring expedition include Asiaweek and the Ming Pao newspaper, both based in Hong-Kong, the BBC and Voice of America.

The Chinese spokesperson justified this new regression to pre-Olympic censorship standards by saying that other countries, such as Great Britain and Australia, have taken similar steps in restricting Internet access.

We have heard that trick many times before. What the regime refers to is attempts, as flawed as they may be, by Great Britain and Australia to block child pornography and terrorist websites, and using that example to ban perfectly legitimate content, such as the one found in the above-mentioned sites.

China may try to portray itself as a progressive country striving to turn the Internet into a "harmonious" means of communication "based on ethics and morality by consensus," as it periodically tries to sell it to the rest of the world at international fora.

The reality is, of course, whenever those functionaries get back to China, those lofty goals will crumble under the weight of any given "pressing necessities."

Today it was Taiwan. Tomorrow it could be anything else. Just search this blog.