Point 2.1 How to define “false info?”, who has the right to judge? Majority or minority?

Point 2.2. I didn’t see any relationship in between your example and Internet censorship. Obviously you are using one extreme to attack the other extreme. The argument is, is network censorship an outcome of lacking of money of our government, so just the it’s fear? Or just say, if a government as rich as US or Japan, are doing perfectly censorship and banned wikipedia much better than China??

Point 2.3. We talk about the reason of censorship, not the way how to do censorship. We are discussing about why it censor the content and why it’s decided by solely government/party. Every law, like speeding law, is passed by people, not the autocrat. If something on the Internet is like promoting speeding driving, which is illegal, of course every country should protest it. However, this is not the case here. Core question is: why something perfectly legal in other nations are illegal in China? Are any nations in the world all enemies of our country?

Point 3. Same logic applies to everything. Because Internet is harmful, why not turn down all the website, it will be better in terms of cost. Or: since alcohol is harmful, why not ban it absolutely ?

I guess I will stop the debate here because I can’t quite follow your logic. Your assumption moves from “people in China are not so clever” to “underachieved government propaganda can’t make people clear so we need to keep other information away and let our media tell them what to do again” to “It is expensive to do piece by piece censor so we’d better shutdown the whole Internet”. In your argument, the purpose of the censorship varies from “protect people from outside lies” to “someone want to cover up something so that we have to censor the coverup” to “it’s costly to censor piece by piece so we have to ban them totally”. To be frank with you, my friend, I can’t quite follow the logic line.

Fairly enough about this discussion.

Our government should only censor fake info. Yes, that’s true, and even if that’s totally not affordable.

We all know that our society should be ruled by laws, not people. But is that affordable? Every speeding driver should be taken to the court like in the US, instead of just giving him/her a fine ticket? That is not affordable in China. So that’s why whether you’re speeding is judged by some policeman, not the law.

The same logic applies to which website or even which info segment should be banned. Because judging each piece of info costs a lot, so some people out there just take some rights which shouldn’t belong to them and then say, this should be banned, and that shouldn’t.

Let’s talk about Xia’men. Even the message itself is fake, what the media really need to is to tell the truth rather than hide the truth and then censor every message they think untrue.

Wikipedia is not the ultimate place for you the find the truth, it’s invaluable source for you to get information. 1. If there are some cover up about JFK and you know it, why not you edit it and tell others the truth, or you just “assume” that there are some cover up? 2. Even there are some cover up, does it really hurt Chinese people so that GFW will censor it? 3. What is the exact power that want to cover something in China????

Your argument based on the assumption that people could be faked by propaganda can be easily handled via tell them the truth, instead of keep ignorant of all the information and hide the truth. What’s truth? Do people ever know?

BTW, Don’t assume that we have enemies all around the world unless you really know.

Let’s talk about the Xia’men June 1st event. Do you think that all Fujian citizens knew the truth? They were using SMS broadcasting some fake info, while nobody would like to do some research on it. Why? Because they were panic! You just need to make people panic, and they will be easily united to fight against something.

How about JFK? Do you think that you can find true info about this assassination on Wikipedia? Do you think that there isn’t any power doing their best to cover it up?

You think that visiting Wikipedia is ok for you, but actually it’s not ok for everyone in China. Most Chinese people don’t share the same level of understanding as you. This civilization is still too easy to fall into the victim of.. have you ever heard of this:

The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
- Adolf Hitler

You assume that every Chinese is as smart as you are, and they wouldn’t fall into lies. That’s not right. Even Hitler himself was elected by people.

People living in big cities are always trying their best to forget their brothers and sisters living in small cities or country sides. They keep telling what kinda ignorance they suffer from, and just neglect what kinda ignorance there is outside the big cities. If ignorance is just like radiation, we’re living under the shadow of Chernobyl. But at least cities are like shelters, protecting you from radiation. If you don’t want to live here, just move out.

Anyway, there’s no way to clean out radiation. If you’re living in shelters, just don’t complain about it. Because even if you can clean out your shelters, you will still bring radiation from the outside world. So just stay away from radiation, and stop complaining.

The degree of censorship experienced in China is something that I’ve never experienced before (or can imagine experiencing). Call me naive, but I can’t believe that such a great resource like Wikipedia could be blocked.

It makes some of the things I complain about (e.g. Australia’s workplace relations laws) seem very very insignficant.

Thinking that we are standing on a land which is with feudalism as its society background, other than capitalism, you can understand it deeply.

Anyway, it will be changed in your generation. I hope!