Some Random Dude

I am not a bit surprised if SRD is blocked in China. As innocent as your site may appear with its cute graphics, there is the threat of democratic, radical ideas lurking behind the scenes. This can be found in the Weekly links, Design Good links, user comments, and even this comment that I am writing. You indirectly threaten the cloistered Chinese way of life, or so their government believes.

There are so many issues that I have with China’s political views, but more importantly all of their human and animal rights violations. It makes me sick that the U.S. is so dependent on this country for imports, production, etc. We give them unbelievable amounts of money (Walmart, anyone?) that only benefit a few elite, while millions of people suffer.

Without censorship, the web could be the key to show the people a a brave new world out there. Sadly, the Chinese Gov’t knows this fact and will never let it happen.

Yeah, like I said, I am still unsure if the site is really blocked – but still, I completely agree with everything you said. Just the chance that it’s blocked is completely ludicrous.

dude, the problem is you’re way too carbon-friendly.

I think you’re right Alex. I’ll make sure to put more guards and barbed wire on the site as well. ;)

Given the wide range of stuff you talk about, it’s possible that at some stage in the past you triggered something automatically.

If you talked about censorship in one point in the article and Chinese design in another, perhaps that would flag the site.

Oops – mind you, it says my site is blocked too and I’ve nothing on it, so perhaps it’s reporting it wrong. I just noticed the little disclaimer at the bottom.

Hey, nice find Kevin – that definitely throws the accuracy of that site into question. Either that or that Chinese firewall is completely out of control. ;)

Thanks man.

My website is also “Your URL is Blocked!” :) so show me website that is not blocked? Greetings

PK – I think you’re right on this one. Unless Google and Yahoo are blocked as well, then this site is not working correctly. I think I am going to have to do an update for this article. :(

I’m in Tianjin, China right now and no, your site is not blocked because I can access it without a http proxy, like I use if I want to read wikipedia or any other blocked website, using http proxies is easy and works, so the chinese filter is just a big annoyance and a filter for mainstream people who have no clue. I was looking on google for “blocked in china” to find a way to know if one of my new site is blocked in china or if it’s just a network problem because I could access it but not anymore, and via http proxy I can. OK I’ll have a look at that not-so-useful application!

Hi, I am in China and CAN access this site.
However yesterday the GFC (great firewall of china) started blocking yahoo sites. Having lived here for 4 years and had direct experience I feel that many ‘westerners’ are hoodwinked by the media spinning ‘the worst’ from some small story somewhere in the backblocks of China. While bad things DO happen it aint as bad as the media beat it up to be. Also ‘America’ aint as good as it could be either :)

I gotta add this too.

‘fallen ging’ (purposely spelt wrong) is in my opinion a dangerous cult in China and is illegal. It should be illegal and should be cleaned up. I liken it to WACO
in the US. At least the gov here is ‘preventing’ as best as they can, an evil cult. Perhaps America should do similar with the many evil cults they harbour as it would make the world a better place.
Sometimes ‘free speech’ is simply allowed to go too far….
‘fallen ging’ (purposely spelt wrong) in western countries is made out to be just a religious group when in fact it is NOT in China. Be careful whom you mistakenly support.

daxi

Daxi–Thank you for your insight. It’s good to know that an relatively (haha) innocent site like Some Random Dude isn’t blocked in China.

After reading your insightful words, I decided to look up “fallen ging” on the internet. Of course, I made sure to spell it correctly. On major websites, there was little information I could find that gave examples of how the religion could be cult-like. Instead I found generic/uninteresting historical facts about the ‘faith.’ While I am not questioning the validity of your statements, it makes me wonder how much information/ideas/opinions are censored and filtered between countries, this religion being an excellent example. Although I’ve heard very little about “Fallen ging” in the media (disturbing) I can tell it is a hot topic because the editing access was locked on Wikipedia and there was a disclaimer about the neutrality of the information.

I think we can all agree that the problem of censorship is far greater than whether or not a country will allow people to access Yahoo or Myspace. The internet is a small example of a massive problem…

daxi – Thank you so much for the comments. I vehemently agree with you that America is not the shining pillar of free-speech for all to look upon in awe – especially after the post 9/11 political shifts. I also have no doubt that many China-censorship stories have been way overblown – which is highly unfair.

Still, I am very cautious to support any limit to free speech. There are plenty of people in this world that prove free speech has its problems (Ann Coulter anyone?). It is easy to limit free speech from the criminal and unpopular – however, in my opinion, the paradox is that their free speech rights are the most important. Once you allow limitations on speech for any reason, you open up the door to limit speech for lesser and lesser reasons. We have started to see this happen in some modern countries and, frankly, it is frightening.

Granted, there are exceptions to my statement such as personal threats – I understand that pragmatism must be practiced. Still, I would rather lean towards more free speech with the problems that come with it than less free speech and the benefits that come with it.

Once again daxi, thanks so much for the comments – they added a tremendous amount to the discussion.

Kellie,
It is interesting -perhaps insightful, in your search that you didn’t find much negativism. Maybe the gov here ‘blanket censors’ all to do with this subject.
somerandomdude,
The free speech issue is one that USA and others have developed over many years, however I think that China (and Chinese ppl) ARE changing, but as with anything it does take TIME, just as it did in recent histories of western countries.
See this recent news article for an interesting example;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/27/AR2007062702962.html?hpid=topnews

My comments,

What seems unfair to me is that the US continually attempts to impose it’s moralities on external countries while doing or allowing equally deplorable acts to continue under its control.

China is rising economically, AND socially. The young people here 10-20 Y/O have a healthier mentality than ever before.

The flipside of this is that America is Shrinking in economic power (or at least dilution) AND shrinking socially, as are many other western powers.

Change is hard for anyone, even harder for any country.

by the way Yahoo is no longer blocked -perhaps it was ‘a test’
Strangely enough I cannot access the http://greatfirewallofchina.org/ site. kinda not surprising :)

daxi

daxi – Once again, thanks for the comments. I basically agree all with all your points. Just to make one thing clear, I don’t consider free speech an American idea, or a Western idea – rather a human idea that all cultures can relate to. I welcome a more intellectually free world – and that includes basically all Western countries.

I spent 3 months living in china and I honestly have to say that the filter is really not as bad as what I expected.

A few things I noticed were anything with a server redirect would give problems so all your rss feeds that use feedburner would not work at all, period.

I was able to access all the big news sites like bbc, cnn loads! That was a big suprise to me…

Annoyingly some sites were blocked but often the most random sites you would never expect to be blocked e.g. http://www.holux.com a gps manufacturer…