Small Victories for China's Netizens But Are They Still Losing the War?

Hi Simon,

Interesting post. To answer your question, I'd like to paraphrase a very good quote I read some time ago about the 'proper' way to view modern China. The quote goes, "In viewing and evaluating modern China, one must view it like a movie, not a picture." In other words, instead of just looking at a snapshot, a meaningful evaluation can only be reached while reviewing previous history and past examples. With that quote in mind, the questions one needs to ask in order to ask your question is: "Regardless of the current situation, do the people now have more influence or less influence over the government compared to the past? Is the government more concerned or less concerned about public opinion, compared to the past?" In determining who is 'winning' in a war, simply evaluating who has the 'stronger' position and the 'weaker' position isn't enough. One also needs to take into account the issue of 'momentum'. So I will add a third question to the previous two: "Regardless of the current situation, is there greater momentum on the side of the people, or on the side of the Party?" I think the answers to those three questions will give you the answer to your question as well.

Green Dam Youth Escort is not just fun to tease. It also created an opportunity for some enterprising cyber warfare. Apparently, this software will download upgrades from servers. Servers in the US, under the control of the company who wrote the original software which was duplicated in China. And all new computers will be required to have this software installed. The behavior of this software is like a trojan horse, and it keeps tracks of all activities of the computer, and have functions to actually close programs being used, etc. This is an exceedingly convenient hook in to hundreds of millions of computers in China from this single company which controls the server providing updates to all these computers. One of these days, one of the updates to these millions of computers will contain pieces of code that will act up by another trigger to do some funny things. And this may just happen before some real physical attacks somewhere...

I think the Green Dam is a brilliant idea - for the hackers...

But the more interesting opportunity is the business of helping people to disable this software on their machine.. This can make some serious money.

Chinese netizens did not win on the case of Deng Yujiao.
In fact, she was charged murder, but because of her confession after the "crime" and her special situation during the process of murdering, she was freed.

She committed the crime of "being-raped".

We all know the CCP will win all cases, bar none, including the Deng Yugio case. The reason is simpele: In case of pending failure, call the PLA. There is no way an organization that is willing to mow down its own people to retain power to fail, or back down. And since all Chinese opined that people facing a strong government must submit to the demand by the government, no matter how unreasonable, or else face the consequence of "forcing" the government to commit brutal acts against its people, Chinese will not fight for their rights or freedom. Submission to power is the most important trait of Chinese.

Is there hope on this planet that someone may possibly stop dumping waste at this Time forum somewhere down the road?
Perhaps, well, until that person finds himself a job ... not easy in this economic downturn, isn't it?

I suppose Beijinger Simon Elegant might have already learnt what a middle school student learns from a the CCP-run (or sponsored)... OOOPS ... school ... that in order for one to establish a good understanding of a thing one would have to do two type of comparisons: a horizontal one, and a verticle one.

A horizonal comparison tells one where does this thing sit on the planet today; a verticle comparison provides one with insight into how this thing has been evolving over time.

See, the CCP-run school is in fact not that bad not only in terms of teaching students hard science but also in terms of teaching students philosophical thinking.

Was Mr. Elegant the Beijinger a good student?

[...] • En lille sejr for de kinesiske netizens, men er de ved at tabe krigen, spørger Time Magazine. [...]