Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai
It is clearly a message of solidarity.
An article in the Wall Street Journal (http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2009/06/02/twitter-goes-down-in-china/) says, "A Twitter spokeswoman didn't have an immediate comment and couldn't confirm whether the service was blocked in China." while Australian news media (http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25581519-5001028,00.html) report, "A Microsoft official said Tuesday its Bing.com, Live.com and Hotmail.com sites were among several to have been blocked for customers in China."
Doesn't sound like the block is self-imposed. But would that make sense in any case? Self-imposed censorship in the name of free speech?
As someone who lives in China
As someone who also lives in China, my attempts to load Twitter bear the usual Great Firewall earmarks: "The connection was reset" errors with easy circumvention via anonymous proxy. Note that as of this writing (June 5, 9 PM local time), MSN, LiveMail and HotMail are accessible in Shanghai; Twitter and YouTube are not.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, Chine
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, China
Right to peaceful protest: There are hundreds of peaceful protests a year throughout China, ranging in size from single individuals up to groups of hundreds. While I'm no legal expert, it seems to me the relevant differences between Chinese and, say, US laws governing peaceful assembly are that the Chinese government can be a bit more nebulous in denying permits, and that protests espousing illegal activities or undermining social harmony are not tolerated. Now, one might (and probably could) argue that the government has abused loopholes in the laws. But the right to peaceful protest is enshrined in the Chinese constitution.
Right to choice of religion: Again, the right is constitutionally guaranteed. I am a practicing Catholic who attends Mass weekly here in Shanghai. If I wanted to, I could become Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or one of hundreds of persuasions of Protestant, all without government interference. I'm even free to proselytize.
Yes China has laws governing the limits and nature of permissible religious activities. So does the US. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have found themselves in US court over refusal on religious grounds of medical treatment for their children. American religious and charitable groups are required to register with the government (currently only for tax purposes) and their right to freedom speech is curtailed: ask an American pastor or priest to endorse a particular political candidate (or even party) next election cycle, and watch how fast the government comes down on his church. How is this substantively different from China? While you or I may not like where China draws its lines, the fact remains every country draws lines.
Right to have children: Without intending to start a protracted debate over China's one-child policy, it is not illegal in China for couples to have multiple children; the national average is currently two, statistically identical to the US. It is true that the government attempts to dissuade multiple children through a(n often heavy-handed) system of positive and negative incentives, such as fines, denials of government assistance, and lump-sum retirement payments to compliant couples. It is also true that the policy has always been ripe for abuse by corrupt (an endemic problem in China) or overzealous local officials, most notoriously through incidences of forced abortion and sterilization (both of which are illegal; http://www.mahalo.com/china-forced-abortions) in rural areas. But that hardly equates to accusations of systematic government policy, and your assertion that Chinese couples have no right to have children is plain silly. In any case, the government is slated to scrap the one-child policy completely in the near future http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3451974.ece.
Right to choice of political persuasion: depends on what you mean. Yeah, there's only one legal political party in China (and yet, CP membership, which is in decline, barely keeps pace with the US Democratic party). And yes publicly advocating contrary to the "party line" can get you in a boatload of trouble. However, I am free to personally believe any politics I wish, as long as I don't make myself a public nuisance in the process. You may not like that, and you may consider that a violation of free speech (personally, I don't and I do). I just wanted to clarify that the Chinese government doesn't give a rat's petutti what my political opinions are as long as I don't go around disturbing social harmony.
OK, flame away. But flame me for what I'm saying, not what I'm not: don't accuse me of being some pro-China apologist who thinks China has no human rights problems (even Beijing admits it does; see its 2009-2010 "National Human Rights Action Plan"). What I am arguing is that most human rights issues (there are glaring exceptions, such as Beijing's official Tibetan policy) in China are traceable not to a lack of legal protection, but a failure of enforcement, and the main culprits are systemic corruption and Beijing's obsession with face. The pandemic of local political corruption, an open secret even amongst Chinese, severely hampers the central government's attempts at reform, and its paranoia over losing face leads to an almost schizophrenic approach to nearly every problem: does the government address it openly, or sweep it under the proverbial rug? I see this almost daily even in the local press: official news reports delicately trumpeting some new anti-corruption policy or a successful crackdown all without actually admitting there is a corruption problem at all. See this: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1615936,00.html for what I think is a pretty fair assessment of the problem. Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, China
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand
