Over the past several weeks, the big news in China has surrounded first the “Green Dam Youth Escort” and then the CCTV spearheaded China mainstream media attack against Google. There has been an overwhelming amount of coverage both by the blogosphere and the Western mainstream media, enough to make your head spin.
For those who aren’t familiar with what’s going on, here’s a quick 12 point summary of this entire ludicrous mess:
1. Government announces that web-filtering and censorship software called “Green Dam Youth Escort” (silly direct English translation of a more reasonable sounding Chinese name) is required to be included with all new PCs sold and shipped after July 1, 2009. This initiative is packaged as helping parents protect their children from pornography and other “vulgar content” online.
2. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.
3. “Green Dam Youth Escort” tested and hacked, confirming that the software censors political content that Chinese government doesn’t want its people to see. It also does a rather poor job of its advertised purpose of blocking porn, with a plethora of false positives and false negatives, and generally sucks. Oh, and apparently it stole its code from an American software company. Wheee!
4. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.
5. CCTV airs news broadcast attacking Google China (but not Baidu) as corrupting China’s youth by providing links to pornographic and “vulgar” content. This news report featured Google’s search box suggestion feature, which automatically “suggests” to currently popular search terms as you type in your search query. CCTV showed how a search for “son” on Google suggested vulgar content like “mother-son incest.” Yikes, right? The report also featured an interview with a university student, named Gao Ye, recounting how his friend became “absent-minded” after discovering porn through Google. Other state-controlled media follow suit.
6. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.
7. That university student, Gao Ye, is found by China’s human flesh search engines and revealed to be an intern for CCTV, confirming widespread suspicion that the yet another ridiculous CCTV interview was likely scripted or directed. “Gao Ye” then becomes a censored term on Google.
8. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.
9. On the evening of June 24th, reports flooded in around the internet that various Google websites were blocked and inaccessible throughout China, in what everyone suspected to be the Chinese censors either “warning” Google (for its unhealthy content of course) or just completely losing their minds. Access was shortly restored for many, though for some, it remains either intermittent or still blocked.
10. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.
11. A Chinese internet user discovers that all those incestuous and “vulgar” search suggestions on Google aired in CCTV’s smear campaign against Google were actually fake. In the days leading up to the news report, all of these searches were artificially generated (perhaps through computer programs) in order to trick Google’s search box suggestion feature to show these “searches” as “popular.” All of these search originated from…Beijing.
12. Chinese and foreign internet users outraged.
So yeah, there we go. Okay, maybe that was really only six points (seven, if we include a point for “outraged”) but long-time Chinese blogger Wang Jianshuo has a 10 point review if you want to compare notes.
It is difficult to imagine what the next big development will be, especially given that the Chinese government hasn’t really backed down from the Green Dam issue. In fact, as we saw above, it shamelessly brought its massive propaganda apparatus to bear in supporting Green Dam through deception and defamation. While Google has, in some ways, benefitted from the increase in attention (of the bad news is good news variety) CCTV brought to it by wrongfully setting up and scapegoating them, the entire fiacso still leaves a wretched aftertaste in everyone’s mouth. More disheartening still is that none of us really know what can be done about washing it all away. The Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software will still be deployed on all new computers in a few days time, and CCTV and Xinhua will remain the primary mainstream media of China even if their credibility has been eroding and eroding with the average Chinese citizen.
Has any of this outrage, both foreign or domestic, accomplished anything in combating the systematic and institutional wrongs inherent in the acts of censorship, propaganda, and coercion above?
please check this:
http://search.cctv.com/searchmore.html
cctv copied logos from google.
such asshame.
A commendable summary of events.
“Has any of this outrage, both foreign or domestic, accomplished anything…?”
I’m sure the CCP will be concerned at the extent of domestic opposition to their clumsy ‘harmonising’ and will seek to appease the masses somewhat. It was refreshing to note that most people were not buying into the attempted shift of blame to Google. A welcome change. It would also be a welcome change if Google showed a little more backbone and told the CCP to shove its censorship. It would make my heart swell with pride if Baidu did the same thing.
I am pretty skeptical when i read stuff from websites and news, so i looked into insights to see if i could reproduce the data used on the report claiming beijing had framed Google..
Well… if you look at the google info: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90%E4%B8%8E%E6%83%85%E4%BA%BA&geo=CN-11&date=6%2F2009%201m&cmpt=q
you can see that in fact the searches for “child and qing ren” has only peaked in the days from june 10th-17th. Which would naturally bump it up in the suggested results.
Anyways, dat’s damn sneaky. I hope the green dam explodes in the gov’ts face! seriously. People should try to stand up for their freedom and rights. I have heard that people plan to be offline on July 1st, to protest the green dam. But let’s face it, that will do jack squat!
People need to really stand up for their freedom and rights, and be heard, and get some action done! For one, I’m leaving China. Dont’ wanna deal with any of this b.s. anymore. sick of it!
At first I came here thinking this place had come a long way, but now i see nothing ever changes, just new masquerades.
It was never about Google’s porn, it’s about giving credits to the Green Dam software. The government is under massive pressure from both foreign organizations/governments and domestic public that the decision be rescinded, and in a desperate attempt to [hopefully] gain support, they launched a laughable propaganda which ended up attracting more hatred.
Might think twice before attacking a reputable company in the future.
I think that China is indeed caving in to pressure of Green Dam software as a good sign. This software can be disabled by the user and can be uninstalled is what the customers wanted.
Harmony only works when all elements involved are harmonious to begin with, seems that the powers to be in Beijing tend to forget that small (but important) axiom more often than naught.
Explains the rather nasty tone the Llama Brigade has had at the China Daily BBS the last few months.