Living in Shanghai as an expatriate can give many foreigners the illusion that China has reached grandness on the level of Tokyo or Taipei. While incredibly beautiful as a country and as a people, sometimes I forget that communist China is in fact... communist.
I blog to this page using a proxy server based in the U.S. Why you ask? Because the Chinese government has effectively banned BlogSpot and several other online blogging sites with the exception of Xanga (I have absolutely no idea). Maybe you Xanga folks are slightly less opinionated. =P
A proxy server works by redirecting my internet inquiries to a server in the United States, (or possibly any varying country that does not impose similar restrictions on their citizens). Therefore when I request access to an internet site, the servers are somehow tricked into thinking that it is an American computer contacting them. This bypasses the restrictions on China, because they don't see that I am looking at sites such as BlogSpot, or Google.... or anything involving Taiwan. Haha. Instead it appears that I am really really interested in this American site... which in actuality is the proxy server.
Though I'm not afraid of getting caught for any of my blogging, since I am not calling forth a revolution from within China. Several internet bloggers, which have effectively exploited this from of free speech have actually been imprisoned for as much as 10 years.
Here's a quote from Guo Liang from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing: "Mao Zedong said that to have power you need two things: the gun and the pen ... The Communist Party has the gun, but the Internet is now the pen. If they lose control of it, something will happen to challenge their authority."
They've in fact responded drastically to the new threat closing down hundreds of internet Cafes in Beijing after one cafe had a fire accident. They claimed that having several computers in one room was a serious fire hazard. If this were truly the case, no one would ever play Counter-Strike... because they'd all have died 5 years ago in America.
I've noticed that a vast majority of the foreigners studying here at Fudan treat it as a semester long vacation, which I find a bit annoying. However, I have to remember that most people aren't like me and actually look forward to vacations. I doubt many people have travelled the way that I have though. I doubt many visitors to New York have walked through Alphabet City past midnight. Or that many people living in Boston had tutored kids in the impoverished suburb of Dorchester.
Probably the difference with me is that I've always known that I was gonna leave home. So every where I go I kinda scout the place out and that's why it's important to see the worst areas. From the Bronx to the very worst of Oakland, you have to look. Because the only time you can tell that you're in love with a place is when you want to see it--and help it--get better.
I have a lot of faith in the People's Republic and I think it will get better in the coming years. The blatant capitalism now visible in the country's major cities although not entirely welcome by everyone is at least a great way of thwarting the communist (but more accurately fascist) government. Communist societies are built on the principal of a classless society, whereas the efforts made by the PRC government to censor the internet are efforts to maintain power and oppress opposing views. It actually sounds a little bit like... america. Anyone hear of the Patriot Act? Or the more geeky news of Blizzard Entertainment temporarily banning the in-game advertisement of gay-friendly guild recruitment in World of Warcraft? The only difference is in the way that these efforts are organized and centralized. I think that there are problems with almost every government, though.
I don't have faith in governments really, but I have faith in people. I have faith that the demonstrators that died at the hands of the Chinese army 15 years ago in Tiananmen Square did not die in vain.
I look forward to the day that I can walk through the streets of Shanghai and feel the city's tremendous wealth spread beyond the Western expats that flood the richer areas. I look forward to seeing Chinese-born enjoying the same luxuries that I receive so easily here... I look forward to getting access to www.wikipedia.org back.
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