You might have heard about it, China's systematic blocking of certain websites. Earlier this year, someone somewhere in the world put something up on Youtube criticising the Chinese over their management of Tibet. Almost overnight, the GFW blocked Youtube in its entirity. There is one way round it, you can use a special proxy site and watch a certain amount (usually around 5 minutes) for free every 8 hours (or pay 1.50 euros to receive more access). This is ridiculous.
And now, this week, Blogspot has been blocked (at least from my home connection, I've not tried on other connections or other computers), which makes updating very tricky. I am currently using a proxy site to bypass the so-called firewall, but it is hassle and I'm not even sure it will work when I come to actually POST this.
It's annoying that I should have to resort to this kind of thing, though I'm probably (in part) one of the reasons for it happening in the first place, it's not like I say very positive things about this country. Here's one more negative - China, you fooled the world into giving you the Olympics, and you are currently successful in pushing your economy Westward, but if you ever hope to free yourself from this ridiculous "developing country" ball to which you have chained yourself, and integrate properly with the so-called First / Civilised world, you will have to relax your grip on the population and let them see what the world really is.
Or, here's a start for you, let Chinese people see the real CHINA. The China that prevents mourning parents from visiting the crappily-built schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake last year (while other surrounding buildings remained upright) which form the last place their children were seen. The China that wants to keep an entire town in a semi-destroyed state to create a national site for people to visit and remember the tragic natural disaster which killed thousands (in part due to rushed, poor Chinese architecture). The China which is closing its citizens' eyes to anything they don't want them to know about. The differences between the Chinese higher "education" system and that found in Western countries (seriously, tell me of a European country which requires you take a politics exam in the knowledge of your nation's history and government - according to their version! - and then uses THIS mark over the academic exams to determine where in the country - ie how close to Beijing! - you can study). The China where a "Teaching University" not only has rules on the lowest height permitted for students, but also rules against disabled candidates attending university to become teachers (because a "teacher must be perfect"). The Chinese government which is running scared.
In my gym there's a guy who wears a tshirt saying "I love China more than ever" ... well I hate China more than ever. The more I hear about how life works here the more I will be happy to leave. In 64 days' time I will be on a plane to Dubai, and then home. I know expense scandals, two ongoing stupid wars, and a healthcare system with a questionable future awaits me, but when I compare general life to this, I cannot wait to be back.
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3 comments:
Give it a couple of days when your back and you will be complaining about shitty England, though...
did you not read the last paragraph? im ALREADY complaining about England! but for entirely different reasons, and ones which i can deal with a lot better. and though we have chavs, at least the vast majority of english society isn't roaming the street, coughing up their lungs onto the pavement while encouraging their children to pee in the street through a large slit in their trousers :)
I read your whole blog and all I can say is you got conned big time. I don't know about you exactly, but you probably thought you were going to this amazing exotic place which is actually a shithole. I don't know if you asked but lots of overseas Chinese would have told you this - I find it amazing that you actually had the guts to go to Urümqi.
China today is something like Victorian England with the Internet. It took a lot of deaths (WWI) to clean England up and likewise a lot of people will unfortunately have to die in China too - starting with the old communists whose names you will never hear in the news (I note politics is not your strong point) but who actually run the show. Anyway I hope you don't forget that China is a shitty country because it has a shitty government by historical accident. Chinese people are perfectly capable of being what you call "developed", the main examples being Taiwan and Singapore.
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