People in the west like to think of Chinese people as victims of a cruel, tyranical government. That is imposing your cultural standards on a society with a very different opinion on how society should conduct itself. Also, I spent 14 months in China and I experienced very little cencorship on the internet. During 4 months I spent there in 1998, I remember reading slashdot frequently, and many times saw stories about the "great firewall of China". I never had any trouble accessing any of the sites that was supposedly blocked. I had the same experience during 10 months there in 2004. The only thing I ever found that appeared to be blocked was google image search, and occasionally google cache. Yes there is some internet cencorship in China, but not that's not neccesarily against the will of the general public.