Last week, China started, among other things, blocking YouTube in an effort to stem the Tibet separation movement. This week, a number of reports point to the fact that China is increasingly stepping up the pressure on pro-Tibet protesters.
Despite the clampdown on protesters, images and video continue to leak out onto the internet documenting clashes between protesters and police.
In the beginning, China wanted to show the world that they are not restrictive on local media outlets. Another image China has been wanting to show off to the world during the Olympics is that China is harmonious. With Tibet uprisings, protests, clashes with the police, blacking out of foreign media showing the demonstrations and preventing foreign journalists from entering areas around Tibet, the protests have become a public relations nightmare for the Chinese government. As it stands right now, trying to look like an open and harmonious society has become little more than a dream at this point in time. This week, things are not improving for this ideal imagery either.
Just last week, reports surfaced that China is posting wanted ads in major Chinese web portals for 21 rioters.
It seems that the clampdown is continuing as an article in the Guardian shows:
A senior Chinese government official has said that he welcomes closer international ties to develop the country’s burgeoning digital media sector, but also delivered a stark warning to foreigners not to use “internet issues” to meddle in China’s “internal affairs”.
[...]
These misunderstandings have arisen for reasons including a “lack of knowledge” of Chinese government policies by foreign companies or cultural differences, Mingzhao added.
“[We are] willing to draw useful lessons from other countries to improve ways of building and regulating the internet,” he said, before adding a strong word of caution. “Any attempt to use internet issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs is definitely opposed”.
A day after this report was published, interestingly enough, another report pointed to how the government has ordered the shutdown of 25 entertainment websites.
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or SARFT, said in a statement on its Web site Friday that officials have completed a two-month audit on video entertainment and video sharing Web sites based on the new rules and decided to shut down 25.
Another 32 have been slated to be “punished” – although it wasn’t immediately clear what that entailed. Popular video sharing Web site Tudou.com was one of those listed for punishment. The list included few major players.
According to the report, under the Chinese rules, Chinese websites are prohibited from “broadcasting video that involves national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography”
A rough Google translation of the original news release can be found here.
It seems ironic how tightening control on websites that ‘damage Chinas reputation’ in of itself is damaging China’s reputation – maybe even more so than if there wasn’t a ban in the first place. It may remind some of the plight of the recording industry where they tried everything in their power to shut down p2p services only to have it overwhelmingly promoted instead of stopped.
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