My dilemma

Thanks to my classmate Mike Plugh, I can provide the voice of thousands of dissidents for people in China. Mike gives me a link to Psiphon--a software that allows people in uncensored countries (such as America) to provide unfettered access to the Net to people who live behind firewalls of states that censor (such as China).

It is very simple. First, I download Psiphon, start it up, give my server a name, wait for my server passing through all the tests, and then I can start to provide people in China to access to blocked sites. However, as a censorship circimvention provider, I must carefully choose users living in a censored country. I don't know how it works, but if my user tells China's Internet police force about my IP address, then my server will be blocked and all the other users can no longer use the Psiphon I provide to them.

Here is the dilemma. I believe one of my friend is a lover of free speech and he hates government's censorship on Web sites, but his father used to work for the Chinese government.
What if his father finds out his son is using Psiphon? Should I give this friend my Psiphon server? Also, I have very closed friend working in a local court in China. Should I provide a chance for a judge to do something that is not accepted by the law? Ahhhh.....

The illusion of young, rich Chinese

The Lives of Others remind me of two distinct articles about China in Time magazine. One is on Nov 5, 2007, about China's Me generation (rich, yound middle class) who care more about iPods than the subsequent suppression after the Cultural Revolution. The other one is on Oct 1, 2007, about China's tightening control on media and the imprisonment of journalists and writers.

It seems that Chinese people are learning two features of American culture--the mindless consumption and the devotion to human rights. Right now, the former one has much more influence on the Me generation than the latter one.

Most of these rich, young Chinese believe that their contribution to economy can help China and the protests of human rights violations are bad for society. An account executive with advertising heavyweight Ogilvy & Mother in Beijing said, "There's nothing we can do about politics, so there's no point in talking about it or getting involved." However, if he has seen The Lives of Others, he will realize that there is no way to separate ourselves from the politics.

If he can't deride the silliness of what he sees, if he can't express his own observation of the society, or worse, if he can't make his work reflect the lives of others, how can he talk about creativity--the most vital element in advertising? As Hu Shi, one of the greatest intellectuals in China, said, " A free nation can't be build by a bunch of flunkies." Without the aspiration of improving human rights, there is no use in talking about building a great nation.

For now, I think the power of the Me generation is only depending on the credit limit of their credit cards.

The most boring job in the world

On my trip to Shanghai in January this year, I found that China government blocked Wretch--the biggest web community in Taiwan. It's like censoring the whole Blogger.com! The same fate has happened on almost all the pictures on the Internet with titles like "bikini," "underwear," "thigh," or "swimsuit." The government not only trample the freedom of speech, they also deprive the pleasure of of every healthy man.

My friend from China tells me that China government hires thousands of people as Internet police task force. Their everyday job is to search keywords relating to contents that might "destablilize China's society and immoralize its citizens." I think they have the most boring job in the world.

Internet police force is a new form of security forces. These people are the reflection of their narcissistic boss. "The security forces ensure that the leader retains his celebrity, and in return the leader empowers the security forces (who often consist of young men from the countryside) to do whatever they want to the population at large," as James M. Curtis writes in "Why World History Needs McLuhan." But China's Internet police forces are no country bumpkins; they are a band of techno-savvy geeks who show Chinese people that everything is still under their control, even on the Internet.

I might work in China in the future, so writing this topic might jeopardize my future career. However, I believe that blogs will bring more accurate pictures of truth than the mainstream media, especially in China, where the mass media are manipulated by the government. Blocking blogs is unbearable.