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Four Chinese internet writers have been sentenced to long prison terms for subversion.
The Beijing Intermediate People's Court sentenced geologist Jin Haike, 27, and Xu Wei, a 28-year-old journalist for Beijing's Consumer Daily, to 10 years each in prison.Yang Zili, a 31-year-old computer engineer, and Zhang Honghai, a 29-year-old freelance writer, were each given eight years.
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
personal feeling:
We should be thankful of the freedom and power that the Internet has given us. Shame our brothers and sisters across the world do not get the same.
Shak
You have the freedom to do whatever you want as long as the authorities approve - even in America.
Dave
did you mean china in particular or "brothers and sister accross the world" in general?
Across the world...
Shak
However, it's somewhat awkward for us to say how another country should regulate their citizens, how much freedom they should be allowed, etc.
I see this as a skirmish in a cultural war. China is a country with a long, rich and "unique" cultural history that differs from ours in the west, and it seems that part of what we're seeing is a defensive action against western cultural influences, against the western ways of expression...
The internet can only hasten the blending of cultural identities. This is so scary that even France and Canada have laws to ban/limit outside cultural influences.
But China is now a part of the world economy, and will have to accept that the Future Culture will be less geographic, and that it will resemble a Tossed Salad of influences and "ways of doing things".
