FROM MAO TO MODO:

Internet prods Asia to open up: The Web challenges the region's authoritarian
governments with a freer exchange of information and ideas. (Kathleen
McLaughlin, 9/09/04, CS Monitor)

Those who study the Internet and its impact on Asia say that
although the region is rife with censorship efforts like those in China, freedom is relative and increasing by degrees. The free-wheeling and expansive nature of the online world has proved difficult to control, pushing Beijing and similar governments in the region to make concessions, much as they had to do in entering Western-style economics and trade, say analysts.

"The Internet will make any country freer," says Ang Peng Hwa, a professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "If you have the Internet, you're connected to the world. If you want to be a part of the world, you have to play by the norms of the world. The world norms lean toward a freer Internet."

China's massive firewall is already showing cracks under the weight of the
Internet's expansion. The pressure has come from innumerable sources,
including an onslaught of weblogs, open-source directories, and projects like Wikipedia, an "open-content" encyclopedia.

Five years ago in China, most Western newspaper websites were blocked from
viewing. Today, the Chinese censors who watch the Internet target more
specific sites - chat forums on ultrasensitive topics like Tibetan liberation and the Falun Gong religious movement. [...]

So while the average Chinese still can't walk into an Internet cafe in Ningbo and pull up the homepage of the Taiwan government, he can read The New York Times.

Haven't they suffered enough?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2004 10:58 PM