In the Orwellian world that is the People’s Republic of China, one has to often reverse the meaning of terms to understand their true meaning. That is the case again this week when China announced a new crackdown on journalists to “protect” the public from “fake journalists and news.” In modern Chinese, that means protecting the public from real journalists. The crackdown is being carried out by he General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP).
The new laws will further restrict the circulation of information on the Internet, which (with more than half a billion users in the country) represents a threat to the totalitarian regime. GAPP announced that all of these free journalists have “severely disturbed the press and publication order and affected social harmony and stability.” Social harmony means that they are threatening the ruling elite, which live like Mandarins in a faux communist regime. Stories revealing crimes and corruption on the web have been declared “vulgar.” It is an ironic since vulgar is defined as “Of or associated with the great masses of people.” In this case, the Communist regime wants to crush stories and concerns associated with the great masses of people.
It is also a cautionary tale for American traveling to China. Gap is a place to find distressed jeans. Gapp is a place to find distressed journalists. However, they do have a similar slogan: “For every generation there’s a Gapp.”
Source: Physorg
china may soon be choking on the waste products of their over industrialization.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/multimedia/videos/Dirty-Laundry-Chinas-Poisoned-Water/
Really not that much different than dealing with CNN or other ‘news’ sources. I have my press badges from doing radio and TV and frequently get treated like I’m not valid enough because I don’t work for CNN or like minded cable news. And they love that! CNN’s own shows reflect that they feel they get to determine who is and who isn’t a journalist while they also bait for “iReporters”. Howard Kurtz has even had this discussion about who qualifies as ‘journalists’ because to him…if you went to an accredited journalism school (which I did), then you are for real, but otherwise, you’re just a ‘blogger’. This blogger has broken many stories, overturned national stories that were being falsely narrated, and confronted many officials with microphones and pens for almost 15 years. In China, I’d be a ‘fake journalist’ because I didn’t seek their permission first.
Another Country we are taking cues from…..Does that happen because we owe them money or because they own us….
Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_is_what_revolution_looks_like_20111115/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu0Z1hOxK68 the whole western world is operating on this model now
Mike S. I’m glad to see your postings. Are you still dealing with texting by phone or are you back to a computer? Hope you and the better half are well.
from article:
“…free journalists have “severely disturbed the press and publication order and affected social harmony and stability.” Social harmony means that they are threatening the ruling elite, which live like Mandarins in a faux DEMOCRATIC regime. Stories revealing crimes and corruption on the web have been declared “vulgar.” It is an ironic since vulgar is defined as “Of or associated with the great masses of people.” In this case, the CORPORATIST regime wants to crush stories and concerns associated with the great masses of people.”
There Professor, I fixed that for you.
What? he wasn’t writing about the U.S.?
http://www.demotix.com/news/906244/homeland-security-detain-occupy-portland-photographer
Homeland Security arresting a reporter at the Portland Occupy Camp.
They were there the whole time, I imagine.
American Censorship Day: November 16th, 2011
Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system. This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same. Join all of us to stop this bill.
Website Blocking:
The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.
Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users:
It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.
Chaos for the Internet:
Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.
If this law passes, sites like Tumblr and Facebook could be shut down for letting users post freely. Join the protest to stop it.
“and it was censorship for a teacher to insist a child read only books in his own grade level.”
I don’t know if that’s censorship, it does sound like complete bullshit on many levels. Citation-needed.jpg and if true, that teacher should be fired.
/proudly reading 12th grade books in 3rd grade.
China learns from US or US learns from China?
Here at home, we are currently, as in today, being threatened with SOPA
One has to wonder if Bloomberg’s silencing of the press in NYC was learned from the Chinese, or if the Chinese learned it from him.
Actually it is probably a national competition the way things are evolving.
Real vs fake journalists, it is hard here for many to tell the difference. The lies of Fox news and the skewing of news, for instance about OWS. (This morning Good Morning America, in their ‘news’ segment had a story about the man they are looking for in connectionto the apparent shooting at the White House (t.e., towards the White House). They ended stating that Occupy DC was a half a mile away and he could be or have been hiding there. Nothing but an attempt to make the line leap to violence/fear of/unsafe as a part of Occupy
(Huff post had headline ‘Oakland Occupy murder’ – the murder, the cops said, appeared to be the ‘typical’ Oakland violence and unrelated but the connection was made and hopefully, by them, put into people’s minds.) Then of course the blackout by Bloomberg…
Mike, I am more of a pessimist, in general, I think, and I despair too, in the day and the dark middle of the night. The upside is; I was upset with the way Occupy Philly has been going. I had decided to disassociate myself with it (in the tiny way I had been). Mr. Bloomberg, bless his dark heart, has brought back some optimism that there is a way to hopefully make my voice heard. Whether Congress and the rest of the uninvolved hear us well, for that there has to be optimism or as you seem to say, what’s the point?
China and the US are pursuing identical policies. This is a very scary but informative article about China: “Chinese TV Host Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times StaffCreated: November 13, 2011Last Updated: November 15, 2011
Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. (Wu Lianyou/The Epoch Times)
China’s economy has a reputation for being strong and prosperous, but according to a well-known Chinese television personality the country’s Gross Domestic Product is going in reverse.
Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece.
The restrictions Lang placed on the Oct. 22 speech in Shenyang City, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, included no audio or video recording, and no media. He can be heard saying that people should not post his speech online, or “everyone will look bad,” in the audio that is now on Youtube.
In the unusual, closed-door lecture, Lang gave a frank analysis of the Chinese economy and the censorship that is placed on intellectuals and public figures. “What I’m about to say is all true. But under this system, we are not allowed to speak the truth,” he said.
Despite Lang’s polished appearance on his high-profile TV shows, he said: “Don’t think that we are living in a peaceful time now. Actually the media cannot report anything at all. Those of us who do TV shows are so miserable and frustrated, because we cannot do any programs. As long as something is related to the government, we cannot report about it.”
He said that the regime doesn’t listen to experts, and that Party officials are insufferably arrogant. “If you don’t agree with him, he thinks you are against him,” he said.
Lang’s assessment that the regime is bankrupt was based on five conjectures.
Firstly, that the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion yuan (US$5.68 trillion). This calculation is arrived at by adding up Chinese local government debt (between 16 trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or US$2.5 trillion and US$3 trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned enterprises (another 16 trillion, he said). But with interest of two trillion per year, he thinks things will unravel quickly.
Secondly, that the regime’s officially published inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real inflation rate is 16 percent, according to Lang.
Thirdly, that there is serious excess capacity in the economy, and that private consumption is only 30 percent of economic activity. Lang said that beginning this July, the Purchasing Managers Index, a measure of the manufacturing industry, plunged to a new low of 50.7. This is an indication, in his view, that China’s economy is in recession.
Fourthly, that the regime’s officially published GDP of 9 percent is also fabricated. According to Lang’s data, China’s GDP has decreased 10 percent. He said that the bloated figures come from the dramatic increase in infrastructure construction, including real estate development, railways, and highways each year (accounting for up to 70 percent of GDP in 2010).
Fifthly, that taxes are too high. Last year, the taxes on Chinese businesses (including direct and indirect taxes) were at 70 percent of earnings. The individual tax rate sits at 81.6 percent, Lang said.
Once the “economic tsunami” starts, the regime will lose credibility and China will become the poorest country in the world, Lang said.
Several commentators have expressed broad agreement with Lang’s analysis.
Professor Frank Xie at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, said that the idea of China going bankrupt isn’t far fetched. Major construction projects have helped inflate the GDP, he says. “On the surface, it is a big number, but inflation is even higher. So in reality, China’s economy is in recession.”
Further, Xie said that official figures shouldn’t be relied on. The regime’s vice premier, Li Keqiang for example, admitted to a U.S. diplomat that he doesn’t believe the statistics produced by lower-level officials, and when he was the governor of Liaoning Province “had to personally see the hard data.”
Cheng Xiaonong, an economist and former aide to ousted Party leader Zhao Ziyang, said that high praise of the “China model” is often made on the basis of the high-visibility construction projects, a big GDP, and much money in foreign reserves. “They pay little attention to things such as whether people’s basic rights are guaranteed, or their living standard has improved or not,” he said.
Behind the fiat control of the economy, which can have the appearance of being efficient, there is enormous waste and corruption, Cheng said. It means that little spending is done on education, welfare, the health system, etc.
Cheng says that for the last decade the Chinese regime has accumulated its wealth primarily by promoting real estate development, buying urban and suburban residential properties at low prices (or simply taking them), and selling them to developers at high prices.
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According to Cheng, the goals of regime officials (to enrich themselves and increase their power) are in direct conflict with those of the people–so social injustice expands, and economic propaganda meant to portray the situation as otherwise prevails.
Few scholars inside the country dare to speak as Lang has, Cheng said. And that’s probably because he has a professorship in Hong Kong.
“I am not convinced we are really behind all that much.”
Frankly,
I actually agree with you. My own views are somewhat more pessimistic than I state here, but I keep them suppressed, or I would be filled with despair. To my mind our only choice is to maintain the optimistic belief that somehow humanity can get itself out of the mess we’ve made of this planet and America can live up to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. To me optimism is both an emotional need and a political necessity. Emotionally, it allows me to go on with life, enjoy the present and plan for the future. Politically it allows me to hope for and work towards turning things around, avoiding becoming peasants in a plutocracy
that is both corporate and feudal.
Sometimes though…..late at night….it is a struggle not to despair at the depths
of humanity’s tragedy. This is true even though, as many regulars here know, my life has been filled with good fortune;
Mr. Turley, I like that you address real issues of real censorship. It is a welcome contrast from the American Library Association [ALA] that addresses fake issues of fake censorship.
For example, in the School Library Journal, Pat Scales of the ALA just said it is censorship to move a book from the children’s section to the teen section, and it was censorship for a teacher to insist a child read only books in his own grade level. I’ll bet GAPP people will get a big chuckle when they hear about this.
Avoidance Behavior: Moving Children’s Books to the Teen Collection is the Coward’s Way Out, by Pat Scales, chair of the ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee: http://bit.ly/vj8jLL
Mike – after seeing how the American media suppressed the truth about Iraq before the invasion and how they fail to ask the tough questions to those in power, coupled with what we saw in various cities last night I am not convinced we are really behind all that much. Because of our history our masters have to be a little more careful and provide a slightly larger fig leaf than China does. But the end point is the same.
“In the Orwellian world that is the People’s Republic of China”
As I read this opening line I suddenly made this association: China has truly become the land envisioned by Orwell in 1984. I wonder though if we are very behind that curve.