Censorship in China: Everyone is Fair Game

In Rebecca MacKinnon's book Consent of the Networked, specifically in the "Copywars" chapter, she describes how certain internet sites are blocked by a country to their citizens. Using China as an example, MacKinnon talks about how this censorship is used to favor the government. Websites that have unflattering material or content that the government does not want their citizens to see are blocked. She goes on to say, "Politicians throughout the democratic world are pushing for stronger censorship and surveillance by Internet companies to stop the theft of intellectual property. They are doing so in response to aggressive lobbying by powerful corporate constituents" (101). Even though that occurs in the democratic world, it also happens in governments such as China. The strong lobbying by the government to limit their citizens' access to content on the internet goes along with the lobbying of corporations. The government is the "powerful corporate constituent" in this case. Up rises such as what occurred in the Arab Spring concern governments like China and they want to limit internet access to prevent the people from viewing anything that expresses displeasure in their views.

China's censorship knows no limits as any website is fair game to get blocked. A very surprising platform was blocked for a few days. As reported in this Wall Street Journal article, citizens of China were unable to access Google this past weekend. Google confirmed that it was not due to any failure of their own equipment. While the reason is unknown, this recent occurrence highlights China's ability to censor and restrict anything they want. The article also points out that The New York Times and Bloomberg News were blocked in China after they both released articles that documented how much Chinese government officials are paid. The conclusion of the article sparks intriguing debate about how doing business with China may be more difficult now because of Beijing's strict censorship laws. It is almost unfathomable that a service like Google, with all its applications, can be blocked to an entire population. Once again, this article reports just the most recent occurrence of the Chinese government using their power.

This article highlights MacKinnon's claims and descriptions about governments like China and the censorship power they take advantage of. No matter what the website is, even a powerful service such as Google, if there is anything that the government takes objection to, it will be blocked. Google is a part of many individual's daily lives whether it is checking e-mail, looking up directions, or just simply entering a search for information. Perhaps Google's ability to do anything is something that concerns China. The search engine's privacy laws are minimal and much of the internet can be found by starting off with a Google search. This kind of freedom is something that governments such as China will definitely continue to be concerned about as more people around the world gain access to the internet. Certainly, discussions about whether it is morally correct to censor citizens from worldwide material and the implications of these restrictions on global business are caused by this recent occurrence. In addition to those discussions, the most obvious takeaway from the article is that all websites are fair game. No service, however big and popular it may be, is too important to be censored by China.