The Line has moved because the People have pushed it.~~~

There has been a huge increase in the number of bloggers and blogs in China in recent years, which many have argued will pave the way for a 'Free' China in years to come. Many have attached great hope and expectations to the Internet's ability to promote the principles of democracy in countries such as China, where it has been previously suppressed. It is true that the rise of the Internet, and all the it comes with, that we as a global community have grown closer and become more connected, however it may seem to be a fairly simplistic assumption that this alone will achieve democracy in places where democratic freedom is not allowed.

We are so often told that freedom of speech is violently suppressed in China and that the media is operated under the watchful eye of the state, where mentions of Tibet, 1989, Falun Gong and Taiwan are among some of the politically sensitive topics that are off-limits to journalists. China, under the leadership of Hu Jintao, places great emphasis on maintaining a 'harmonious society' and that social instability and dissidence are among the greatest threats to the nation. This is a country of over 1 billion people, so its understandable that the government want to maintain social stability, an uprising of any great relevance could have disastrous implications for China - especially undesirable given their current status as the emerging global power. The Party goes to great lengths to ensure that this kind of dissidence does not get out of hand; employing the most advanced and sophisticated filtering capabilities in the world (The Golden Shield Project). In addition to this, in exchange for entering the Chinese Internet market, companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have developed software which filters certain information, usually through blocking searches for a key-word, and prevents those in China accessing the same information as those outside. To combat this censorship, the American government as well as several NGO's (Freedom House, CPJ, etc.) have invested in promoting so called 'free-speech' in China through the use of circumvention software, such as Ultra-Reach.

China is estimated to have 47 million bloggers with 72 million blogs, a number which is rising daily. Blogs generally cover a number of topics, personal life, commentary, specialist topics, hobbies, food, travel, news, current affairs and politics. Some bloggers have caused unrest and controversy in China (Hu Jia, Xu Lai, etc.) because of their writings, but generally blogs serve as an outlet for citizens to vent frustrations, comments, and opinions on aspects of their everyday life.

I personally don't like the imperialist and elitist attitude taken by the western press over China; there is censorship and filtering in our countries as well, and considering our companies developed the software for China, were not in any position to start lecturing others on democracy and free speech. The way I see it, is that the mainstream media is generally in decline, what I see in our media on a daily basis is fairly uninspiring, and the prospect that ordinary citizens can now create their own news medium, a platform for debate, discourse and opinion can only be a good thing in a global media environment that has been totally saturated by advertising and manipulated by PR. This is as good a thing for the people of China as it is for everyone else in the world.

Laura Ling has an interesting film on the rise of blogging in China.

http://current.com/items/85283491/great_firewall_of_china.htm

For more on the Golden Shield Project and the 'Great Firewall' see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Proje