Weblog 7 & 8

As we have learned over the past few weeks, there is alot of censorship going on in China. They basically censor everything. I would be surprised if there were not a lot people upset with this, especially those in China. This is ridiculous that their government censors everything. The government claims that it is for the good of society, but they are doing it to have more control over the Chinese people.
Most of this censorship started when the Internet was brought to China in the 90s. The government became very worried, because they didn't know how the people would use the Internet. Would they use it for good, and for education; or would they use it for bad things, or to overthrow the government. This caused the government to set up crazy blocks on many websites, while censoring others. There are even people employed by the Chinese government who are hired to search the Internet for unsafe sites, and/or for people not abiding by the censorship laws.
The censorship in China reminds me a lot of the book 1984, in which "Big Brother is watching you." You have to be very careful of what you say and do because Big Brother can see everything you do. In China, Big Brother is their oppressive government, which is always watching what they do online.
China's government also covers up incidents that they do not want to spread to the general public. For example, there was a fatal crash in which two trains collided with each other, killing and injuring many people. The original death toll was about 35, which then changed to about 48, and then went back down to about 38. This alerted the Chinese people of the government's attempts to cover up the collision and make it not seem as bad as it really was.
I don't think that the United States should get involved in the overseas affairs in China. I don't think that they should put forth public policy that bars overseas sales of items that will eventually be censored. The items that are sold overseas really have nothing to do with the U.S. other than profit. There is not much we can to stop the censorship, and I don't think it is our place to step in. I believe this would just cause many more issues and make both countries very hostile towards each other. The United States wouldn't take very kindly to foreign nations stepping in on our affairs, so why should we do it to other nations? They will eventually figure everything out in China; they will settle all of the disputes hopefully in a peaceful and mature way. I'm sure it will take a while but that is what needs to happen, it is not our time or place to step in on our their affairs. Besides, we are just making more profit by selling these items to them. While these items may cause the Chinese to have less freedoms on the Internet, they still have the Internet which is a step in the right direction. At least they are not part of the digital divide.
The Chinese been very effective in learning to use microblogs and other similar websites. They speak out as much as they possibly can about their government; the things they like and most importantly, the things that they dislike. This can be very risky, even though the microblogs are not censored, I'm sure the government knows about them. China has one of the most sophisticated systems for blocking and censoring Internet content. The Chinese citizens must be very careful not to say the wrong things, which could possibly end them up in prison, or with some other penalties. I believe that the microblogs are very beneficial to the Chinese people though. They can use them to gather groups of people who feel the same way about government and possibly start strikes, or protests, or even riots/ overthrow the government. This would be very hard to do, but some day it may happen. The Chinese need a new system of government and it isn't going to happen any time soon if there are not people willing to stand up for what they believe in.