As you might have noticed, “Net nanny is on the rampage†– to quote Danwei – and a number of media websites are totally down when attempting to view within mainland China. This is due to the slowly escalating confrontations, clashes and clamp-downs in T*bet (the Opposite End of China blog managed to get itself unblocked by similarly putting asterisks into the names of sensitive places. Apologies if it’s annoying or confusing; please bear with me).
Also – in a new twist on interweb scuttling – some individual pages within a website are mysteriously not showing up. This would explain why a number of pages on the website of the ‘The Times’ (of London) which relate to events in T*bet are failing to load. I’ve never seen this occur within a web-page before: individual pages pulled behind the ‘Great Firewall’ while the site largely remained available, but it has occurred to me a few times with The Times today. Though a new story entitled “Chinese troops parade handcuffed T*betan prisoners in trucks†that’s just popped up on the site is viewable right now.
Youtube’s disappearance in mainland China should be no surprise, since the few references made by the Chinese government to current events in T*bet have been press releases, stating – for example – the illegality of the acts of violence occuring on the streets of Lh@sa.
Thus Youtube was in danger of becoming a rolling-news show of citizen journalism and snippets of news from media agencies across the world being beamed onto the computer screens of Chinese netizens. And that’s the last thing that the Chinese administration wants.
Nonetheless, I’m not intending this as a debate on the unrest, rather as a state-of-the internet post on what’s currently unavailable, and to suggest some good alternative media sources – both for following developments in the violent stand-offs in T*bet and even in one small area of Gansu and Sichuan provinces where some ethnic T*betans are based, and also for your general news needs.
What’s unavailable right now (Monday, March 17th, evening): The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and YouTube – all of those in addition to the ongoing blocks on BBC News, CNN, Blogspot blogs, Liveleak, Revver, Google News, etc.
What’s still available and recommended for news on current events in T*bet: The Times (though some stories are not functioning), Al’Jazeera, Reuters, The Telegraph’s video section, Yahoo and Yahoo News (though it was earlier blocked, even the front page!), and Digg’s news section aggregates some good news from a large variety of sources.
In terms of Chinese based sites, the Hao Hao Report has user-submitted stories from a variety of sources, and ESWN has first-hand accounts and translations of Chinese posts from bloggers in the area. Danwei has listed some other recommended links.
With the midnight (March 18th) deadline for the ultimatum (for the ring-leaders of the recent violence to surrender) looming large, the BBC World Service is saying that the streets of Lh@sa are now quiet.
Live radio: Wow… as I type this Jeremy Goldkorn from Danwei is being interviewed live on the BBC World Service radio which I’m streaming online. He’s commenting on the fact that the current internet crackdown is much harsher than usual. Right now he’s pointing out that ordinary Chinese cannot get much information in terms of details about what’s going on in T*bet, apart from the oblique references to some riots going on. Jeremy finishes by saying that there’s not so much interest in T*bet within China compared to overseas.
Of course, for most of the sites that are AWOL today a simple web proxy will get them back for you, but those don’t work for YouTube or ‘Flash’-based videos.
Well, if you’re finding any other site to have vanished, or some particular website to be providing good first-hand coverage – which seems rare, with The Times claiming there to be only one Western journalist now in Lh@sa, who is their own writer – then please let us know in the comments.
I don’t know about the simple proxies working. Most of the time they choke within a half-second of requesting the link. A certain onion-y proxy works but it’s damn slow.
“Jeremy finishes by saying that there’s not so much interest in T*bet within China compared to overseas.”
I’ll second that. They’re really smooth operators up their controlling the media so that the general population never gives it a second thought.**
China Three step guide to thwarting civil unrest.
1) The second anything ugly hits, quickly find a scapegoat to deflect negative press
2) (preferably make this happen simultaneously) Go into tough love mode to quickly stomp out the opposition and shut down any form of journalistic media not immediately controlled by you.
3) Release something along the lines of “nothing ever happened at T2 in 198*”
Then continue thwarting incident confident that the only people who will continue questioning what’s happening are the foreigners who no one loyal to your cause will trust anyway.
**that being said, I still think US gov’t is smoother, they have things like Reality TV and American Idol to keep the public sedated.
Steven, great roundup – cheers.
To be on the even safer side, I’m going to Censortive the T*bets.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m definitely NO ADVOCATE for State-run media, but it’s making me ill to hear the high/mighty US public outcry at the sad horror that is China and their tightly controlled media… a free media is a public media – there isn’t a mainstream one of those in the US either.
The Chinese machine is pretty brute and anyone that happens to peek behind the curtain will see right away what’s going on, and I think that’s where the rulers of the West (read: US) have gotten super smooth – most people could live their whole lives thinking quite confidently they have a fair and honest news media in a fair and honest democracy… funny that.