The International Olympic Committee has acknowledged that it acceded to Chinese government demands that some Internet censorship be kept in place during the Olympics, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Nevermind that IOC promised journalists could "report freely" from the games. Still, is this really a problem for reporters?
Long story short: this isn't much of a problem. Journalists arriving in Beijing without regularly being stationed there have already spent however much money to get to China and stay in hotels. They can afford a VPN service, which will completely circumvent the government restrictions--that is, if their newsroom doesn't have one already. Journalists will just have to learn how to use the Internet under less-than-ideal circumstances.
The long story: for the unaccustomed, the restrictions will be a pain in the neck. Certain things will be blocked in certain places. You'll never know exactly why something was stopped. Not-so-savvy reporters or those with old computers may have trouble using proxies and VPN.
But this doesn't really stop reporters from "reporting freely."
What would stop that is denial of access, denial of free travel, and threats or actual detainment or deportation after publishing something the government doesn't like.
I can say from personal experience that certain towns in the northwestern province of Xinjiang were being treated as off-limits to foreigners and some Chinese from out of town as recently as 10 days ago. We've already seen Beijing police acting violently against reporters from Hong Kong and breaking camera equipment at an Olympics news event.
Reporting freedom will not be complete in Beijing, but Internet censorship is not the reason. When foreign journalists are the target of restrictions, that's not much of a civil liberties problem for Chinese people, who face a restricted internet whether or not a bunch of reporters get a free pass this summer.
Perhaps reporters should get over their own selves and write more about Chinese people.
UPDATE July 31, 2008 17:23 GMT: The AP reports that an official who guaranteed free access to journalists was surprised by the shift:
Gosper said he first learned of China's backtracking on Internet access when Beijing organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide announced Tuesday that journalists would have only "sufficient" -- not unrestricted -- access to the Internet.
Since then, Gosper said he has felt "a bit isolated" within the IOC and was surprised at being left out of the loop.
The question of why Baidu continues to outperform Google in the world's largest internet user-base has fueled much discussion. I explore business practices and cultural factors that may have fueled this advantage in an article for China International Business this month.
But while Baidu leads now, there's a possibility that Google's strength in the "cloud computing" world may lead to gains in the long run.
The key railway artery in Japan, the Shinkansen or "bullet train" line between Tokyo and Osaka, will introduce Wi-Fi by March 2009, Japan Railways announced.
These trains are already incredibly comfortable, primarily because they are clean and quiet, and they usually deliver you to a key central location in each city. Another perk is the on-platform food vendors who sell totally passable box lunches, sometimes including sushi, without much of a mark-up.
The main drawback to these trains is they're not cheap. And while the JR announcement (in Japanese) doesn't mention whether there will be a charge, I'm guessing they'd brag if it were free, and free Wi-Fi is pretty rare in Japan, at least compared to Chinese and U.S. cities, where coffee shops rarely have the infrastructure for paid connections.
The service is to offer up to 2 megabit connections, and will be built in cooperation with NTT, Japan's massive, partially government-owned telecom.
I can't wait to be in Japan and rich enough to tick off the minutes at high speeds online. Until then, riders will have to search for ambient signals at station stops to send and receive e-mails, something I've found works pretty well on downtown Tokyo JR trains, but can be much harder on the Shinkansen.
Via Ajiajin, and thanks Hose.
Despite advertised measures to decrease pollution, as the one-month countdown to the Beijing Olympics approaches, the government's numbers rank Beijing as having the dirtiest air in China.
With a rating of 98, officially a "blue sky day" but only by two points, Beijing yesterday had the dirtiest air among monitored cities according to the Chinese government Web site that releases daily pollution figures.
Only four other cities, including the capitals of Sichuan, Qinghai, and Liaoning Provinces, ranked above 90 on the scale.
This does not mean that the air will not get cleaner this month. Large numbers of personal vehicles, as well as cargo trucks that do not have Beijing license plates, will be taken off the roads in efforts to reduce car pollution. Additionally, the hyperactive construction with huge numbers of buildings scheduled for completion or undergoing rushed renovation before the Games will stop completely late this month when a citywide construction freeze goes into effect.
The government is planning drastic measures. I hope for the sake of the athletes, visitors, and Beijing residents that they have clear, clean skies. But let's not kid ourselves: the pollution problem in Beijing is not going to go away any time soon. Cleaning up for two weeks may be a nice show, but the city really needs drastic measures. My favorite option: even bigger car taxes than exist now, and get that subway going.
A Chinese news site features a picture of anti-terrorist forces on Segway-back. Is this totally nuts, or a really good idea?
The People's Armed Police during an anti-terrorism drill in Shandong Province.
(Credit: China Daily)- Three questions in the Segway versus no Segway debate:
- These guys should be in pretty good shape. Shouldn't they be able to run faster than one of these? Well, according to the Wikipedia entry for a Segway PT, the vehicle has a top speed of 12.5 mph. That works out to roughly a five-minute mile. With riot gear on, yeah, that's pushing it.
Winner: Segway, if you're willing to be standing really tall all the time in a terrorist situation. - Lots of police use considerably cheaper tools for patrolling and even chasing people on foot. Bicycles are pretty good, and they definitely go faster than Segways. Horses have the added bonus of being pretty scary when they come galloping after you. Walking and running can be hard on the feet, but so could standing on a Segway.
Winner: Bikes and horses. And since bikes are cheaper, I'm going with the old fashioned two-wheeled vehicle. And here's the big one. Shooting guns accurately takes considerable practice to begin with. Now put yourself on a continuously mobile platform and give yourself a rifle with a good kick and that fires many rounds per second, and you may just find yourself falling into the line of your buddy's fire.
[I]f the rider standing on an initially balanced Segway PT leans forward, therefore offsetting the balance, the PT moves forward to regain balance just as in walking a leg moves forward to retain balance. ... This process occurs about 100 times per second, so small adjustments to maintain balance occur almost immediately after the balance is offset by the rider.
For my ammunition money (which is none, as I'm quite unarmed, especially in China), I'm going to get off this awkward mobile pedestal and fire from a reasonable stance.
Winner: Get out and walk.
That's 2-1 against the Segway.
As always when I speculate about science and machines I haven't tried out, feel free to correct me. That's the fun part. I would especially love to hear from anyone who has fired weapons from a Segway.
h/t Imagethief
Some people whose posts may otherwise have been deleted by censors in China have taken to writing backwards in an effort to defeat keyword-searching authorities.
"Bloggers on forums such as Tianya.cn have taken to posting in formats that China's Internet censors, often employees of commercial Internet service providers, have a hard time automatically detecting. One recent strategy involves online software that flips sentences to read right to left instead of left to right, and vertically instead of horizontally," write Juliet Ye and Geoffrey Fowler in The Wall Street Journal.
This is a particularly clever solution in Chinese, which, because of its ideographic writing system, is probably easier to read in odd inversions than most alphabetic languages. One way to imagine this is to remember the English phrase "bass ackwards," a well-understood inversion. Because Chinese splits words into meaning-based units rendered in characters, reading reverse text is more akin to "bass ackwards" than to "sdrawkcab ssa." At least, I think so. We'd have to ask serious linguists to confirm my hunch.
Another circumvention method that has been in action for many years is to write the text and take a screenshot of it. Censors aren't very good at parsing text in a JPEG file.
I don't know whether this is the first time this tactic has been used, but it's one indication of the determination of some people in China to exchange information despite state efforts to control online communications.
Unlocked, semi-legal iPhones have proliferated in China since Apple failed to make a deal with a Chinese carrier. Now that AT&T will offer an expensive solution for those wanting iPhones in the United States on different carriers, will the unlocked market be...unlocked?
For $699, the new 16GB iPhone 3G will be available to non-AT&T customers in the United States. As I've reported, China Mobile and Apple are now in talks that are more likely to bear fruit. This post is based on a few questions I really can't answer. Let's have them.
- Will truly unlocked iPhones still be available in China? I put a lot of faith in the efforts of crackers to defeat whatever Apple comes up with, but I would personally be wary of getting an unlocked iPhone that might not accept upgrades, mostly because iPhone software needs upgrades. For example, I've been baffled--while using friends' phones--by the apparent impossibility of sending a vCard from one address book to another person using iPhone's mail application.
- If the China Mobile-Apple deal goes through, is it possible that "legitimate" iPhones will be locked to China Mobile and useless in other countries? Would top-market Chinese users, who are used to switching SIM cards at will and picking up multiple SIMs at home and in other countries (as well as in Hong Kong), stand for this? I don't know the technology well enough to answer this one.
- Does Apple sell unlocked iPhones anywhere on Earth? If so, I want one.
- And since I'm not an expert in cell phone fees, but know AT&T has raised prices for iPhone 3G service plans (and presumably for the large cost in rolling out the 3G network), is it worth $400 to get out of its clutches over two years and take on a reasonable plan with another GSM carrier in the United States? If you divide $400 by 24 months, a person would only need to find a plan that is $17/month cheaper. That doesn't seem absurd, given the $70/month plus SMS cost of the starting AT&T plan.
- And here's one for U.S. users. If you could buy a phone for much cheaper that was unlocked, but had to be semi-legally or illegally brought from China, would that scare off people concerned about product quality?
I'm going to e-mail one or two experts to see if I can get these questions answered, but in the meantime, feel free to speak up.
After talks broke down earlier this year between Apple and China Mobile over the (non-pirated) introduction of the iPhone, Apple's concession to non-U.S. carriers that they don't need to share revenue has apparently restored progress with the world's largest carrier.
This comes as China's government reports mobile accounts are nearing the 600 million mark. China Mobile alone has more than 400 million accounts. These numbers don't mean there are that many people with cell phones, however. I and many others have multiple SIM cards. I use one for visiting friends, but others use second cards, which can be purchased for under 10 USD, to keep various types of calls separate.
China Mobile said Friday the main obstacle keeping iPhone out of the world's largest mobile phone market had been cleared now that Apple has dropped its revenue-sharing demands.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said this week he would like to see the device introduced in China later this year, and a senior China mobile executive confirmed the two companies were back in talks.
"We've broken through the biggest obstacle and we are negotiating at the working level," Gao Songge, deputy director of China Mobile's general department, told AFP.
Now if only the U.S. iPhone would allow choice of carrier...
Sinobyte commenters have raised two good questions about Internet freedom during the Olympics, set for August 8 to 28 in Beijing. I'm going to give the best kind of answer available for each: an educated guess.
I had written about "free Wi-Fi," which hasn't yet really started working, but is slated to be available during the games in some key areas of the city.
Commenter DangerousOffender asks: How "free" will the access be? Will users be able to access the entire internet, or will it be censored?
I was referring, of course, to "free of charge," but this is a good question. In recent years, no public internet connection has been completely unfiltered. Censorship works in a few different ways: some Web sites are simply blocked at the IP level, making it impossible to access them without a proxy; certain sensitive terms in pages, if detected by filters, can cause the connection to be disrupted; and sensitive terms that appear as part of a URL can trigger a similar disruption.
In the lead up to the Olympics, many online limitations have been relaxed. Access to BBC News was restored. Blogspot has been unblocked, blocked again, and is presently available from this connection in Beijing. English Wikipedia is available, but Chinese Wikipedia is still blocked. After pressure from the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing committee has promised fewer restrictions, but since some ISPs do the censorship themselves to avoid trouble with authorities, any "opening" may not trickle down to every connection.
Rumor has it, anyway, that top hotels full of foreigners and journalists will have unfettered access. I doubt this will be a citywide phenomenon, let alone a national loosening.
JeffW42 asks: How monitored will it be? Will your e-mails be reviewed for "offensive" material, and username and password stored for later reference?
While we have some guesswork to do on censorship, there's even more to do on surveillance. Let's focus on capability and relevance.
Capability: Chinese authorities are viewed by many around the world in governments and other fields as highly capable in infiltrating computer systems. While the Chinese government denies it every time, U.S. authorities say attacks of various kinds have come from China. What's more important is this: We know the government has access to the gateways between China and the rest of the Internet. It should be assumed that, just as any traffic can be filtered for keywords, any traffic can be more closely monitored.
Relevance: The fact that authorities could capture your traffic does not necessarily mean your passwords could be captured. A properly configured SSL-based password system, standard on most websites, should make password capture very difficult if not impossible. Though I am not a security expert, my sense is that this sort of surveillance would be a very low priority for Chinese authorities.
On the question of reviewing e-mail for content, it seems highly unlikely that e-mail would be blocked. If you're planning a big protest or something, however, expect that you and your buddies are on some kind of list for closer monitoring. Simple measures can make all communication much more smooth and quick during high-filtering periods. Users of Gmail, for instance, found that while a normal HTTP connection was extremely slow during the recent unrest in Tibet, using SSL by typing in https://mail.google.com/ (the added "s" is the key) made the connection faster, and e-mails containing sensitive terms were delivered more consistently.
A little perspective
Much is made of China's Internet restrictions. A few things of note, before one seizes on this as unique. I'm not trying to argue that the restrictions are good, but I think a lot of people take this phenomenon and turn it into an anti-Chinese trope without placing it in a bit of a context.
- A study found that most Chinese approved of government controls over the Internet.
- Several students at elite universities I have met in Beijing had no idea there was any censorship.
- The U.S. government, for example, is not exactly free of programs to monitor its citizens' communications.
- China has a lot of surveillance cameras, but so does Britain.
Now, if you can get a visa to China, come on over and enjoy the games. I hear lots of the hotels are wide open.
Anticipated wireless coverage areas in Beijing. If they work, they are advertised to be free until after the Olympics.
(Credit: Wicity via Sina)Beijing Wicity is setting out to cover several key parts of Beijing with Wi-Fi access, and it is supposed to be free until after the Olympics, which will take place August 8-28, but service is spotty in advertised coverage areas.
Danwei reports that Wicity, not to be confused with WiiCity (which doesn't exist, but would be a pretty fun place), is a project of Chinacomm (中电华通). Wednesday is the first day of the test stage.
People in an office in Beijing's Central Business District, or CBD, report that they see the network but cannot get online. I'm sitting in a cafe in Sanlitun, and I don't see the network on either my MacBook or my HTC Touch.
