Tankman's Comedy

The Tienanmen square incident caused a huge, international uproar. The world is used to people keeping their heads down and not going against the flow. People who stand up for what they believe in get remembered. The video was quite shocking because it shows that there are some people in China who are willing to risk their lives to get change. This shows that Chinese people are not afraid to step against the government and the country is moving in the direction that the citizens want. The progression of china and its people is great sign, however, because of china's reaction with removing all of the videos and pictures of the indecent from the internet, it shows that they still can't face the fact that they are wrong. they are worried that they may loose their power over the Chinese citizens. This is an extreme jump forward, and every movement starts with one person and growing into many people. How this one man stands up for himself and his people by blocking the tanks is comical, informing, and extremely empowering making it a good video to spread around and make it go viral. Spreading this video to people and spreading the idea of fighting for the Chinese people's freedoms is the best thing you can do at this time.

The protest against the chemical project

China is one of the worlds biggest producers of plastic. Plastic is used all around the world in many everyday products. The type of plastic that China makes is mainly used for water bottles and people use an  unbelievable amount of water bottles daily. IN 2008 alone, Americans bought 30 billion disposable plastic water bottles. People are protesting against this because it is not eco friendly. This makes sense because creating plastic is a very dirty process. The world needs plastic but if we make too much of it, it may pollute and cause more problems. Many people gathered around the plastic processing plant with signs and posters demanding that the plant be closed immediately. 

The manufacturing of plastic is a huge part of the profits of China. Everyone around the world uses their plastic for everything. As one can see on many cheap products they are made in China. The plastic that is made is also very unhealthy. Children should not have these plastic products because it is so unhealthy. What is your opinion on this?

What do you think?

The Chinese government has blocked many websites and blogs in China. How do you feel about this?

Post answers in the comments section.

Red Scarf Girl Book Review

The Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang is a memoir of the cultural revolution in China from 1966 to 1968. The book shows what life was like for a black family during this time in China. A black family in china is a family that has a socially unacceptable background, or was anti-revolutionary. Any actions done by the regular citizen that slowed or inconvenienced the red guards or a member of the communist party was viewed as being anti-revolutionary. Because of this, Black families were popping up everywhere.

Ji-li Jiang writes of a terrible time in the history of China. Everyone was brainwashed by Mao's greatness that the Chinese began to change the way they thought, dressed, acted and were educated, and if they didn't, they were marked as Four Olds and were humiliated in front of their family and friends by teen red guards. Four Olds are customs that are viewed as being from before the revolution. Mao's philosophy was in with the new, and out with the old. All of the customs that before the revolution were tossed out. Her family went from a success story to being blamed for a grandfather being a landlord which was considered the worst, their furniture and their cloths was taken. Also, their father was arrested and they were questioned as enemies. It was a sobering and scary story by a wonderful, bright, intelligent girl who chose to stand by her family and not renounce them. Ji-li Jiang was a brave young girl that had the power to protect her family.

The book was very well written. As a reader, I was really able to connect with Ji-Li Jiang and her struggles through this time in China. It was easy to understand how Ji-Li Jiang felt throughout the entire book. It really gave me a sense of what what the Chinese culture was like after the cultural revolution. However, the book stopped very abruptly, there were still a few loose ends that never got tied together. Despite this lack of a good ending, the book was an ok read. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in this time in China.

Ways to get around censorship in China

• Use symbols instead of letters
• Cloud hosting service
• VPN or Proxy
• Tor
• SSH tunnel
• The Lantern Project

One of the few ways that citizens can get around china’s censorship of the internet is using symbols instead of letters. An example of this is using @ instead of a. The Chinese government hasn't blocked sites that use these symbols. They have only blocked sites that use letters.

The cloud hosting service is an easy way to get past the Chinese censor i the way that you can mirror a site and host it on a cloud hosting service which is a way to get past the firewall in that the only way to shut those off is that china would then have to shut down all the other cloud service hosting so no more Gmail and various other important things.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network that uses a private connection to the internet that cannot be restricted by a government the only problem is that these are expensive even in america and they are not easy to get. A proxy server is more cost effective but not as easy to do and can be used for much worse things than just looking at censored sites.

Tor is another method that is used to bypass China’s firewall. Tors basically allow someone to browse anonymously. A tor diverts your web browsing over an encrypted network before it comes out at an endpoint. Many tors work even when VPNs, proxies, and SSH tunnels won’t work.

SSH tunnels are very useful when trying to get around the Chinese firewall. Basically, a SSH server allows you to browse the internet with no censorship. A SSH tunnel allows you to connect to this server from anywhere. The service may be a little slower, but there won’t be any blocked sites.

The Lantern project is something that the previous creator of Limewire made that helps someone get past the censor by allowing others to donate bandwidth to people using the project like in the peoples republic of China. This is just expensive to do and just like a proxy server can be used to do something much worse than its intended purpose.

Blocked Websites in China

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Myspace
• Instagram

Facebook is a blocked website because after July 2009 because Xinjiang independence activists were using Facebook as a part of their communication network. Some Chinese users also believed that Facebook would not succeed in China after Google problems. The popular Renren social network has many features similar to Facebook, and complies with PRC Government regulations regarding content flirting. As of 20 August 2013, China has unblocked Facebook.


YouTube was first blocked in the people's Republic of China for several months from October 15, 2007 to March 22, 2008. It was blocked again from March 24, 2009, although a foreign Ministry spokesperson would not confirm nor deny whether YouTube had been blocked. Since then, YouTube is not accessible from China.


Twitter was blocked in China; however, many Chinese people use it anyway. In 2010 Cheng Jianping was sentenced to 1 year in a labor camp for tweeting a comment that suggested boy cotters of Japanese products  should instead attack the Japanese Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Access to Twitter is currently blocked by the government in China.


Myspace is Currently unblocked but YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are blocked in China. the Chinese citizens wanted all websites to be unblocked, but all of them except Myspace is blocked in China. The government said it was OK to not shut down Myspace.


Although Instagram hasn't visibly promoted itself in the Chinese market, it's been very successful with Chinese citizens. Just a month after the update was integrated, more than 100,000 images were uploaded in china. While Chinese government seems unperturbed by Instagram's growing popularity, one user said her photos are bad criticism by people who say she's portraying the country in bad light for China itself.  

      

Blocked words in china

• Iodized salt
• Tibet
• Ai Weiwei
• Yilishen
• Shanwei
• Beijing spring

Iodized salt. This is banned to try to stop the roumors that were spread that said that this salt can prevent radiation poisoning. This roumor started after the flood that caused radiation to spread.

Tibet and Ai Weiwei. These are two words that are flagged when people write them on public sites. They are frowned upon by the Chinese government. Entire messages and whole posts that contained these words or other key words are sensors and even deletes entirely. All of this just because they don't like th Chinese government and hope for change.

There are generally two kinds of internet censorship in china they either completely block a website from users or they instruct local search engines to modify search results for certain keywords.

There are some words that one would never suspect as a censored or banned word.

Yilishen is one. This is a company that convinces millions of Chinese people that one could buy ants, bread them, and then sell them for a profit. And now because of that if you type that word your activity on the internet will be watched.

Shanwei is one similar to the previous one. It is a town in china where a lot of protest against the government occurred and is therefor a word that is not good to be used

Another weird one is Beijing spring. This is a censored because there was a brief period of political liberalization in 1977. During this time the public was allowed to criticize the regime and it lasted a year. Just because the government was weak for a little bit of time they ban the words that made them look bad.

Ai WeiWei

Ai Weiwei Never Sorry Review

    The documentary, Ai Weiwei Never Sorry, directed by Alison Klayman, is about Ai Weiwei’s art and his influence on china. Ai Weiwei’s art reflects on the government and how they treat the regular citizen. The main purpose of the film is to show the true nature of the Chinese government. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested for being so outspoken against the government. This documentary does an excellent job of showing the public response to Ai Weiwei’s arrest. “What can they do to me? none other than deportation, kidnapping and imprisonment, or make me completely vanish. @aww.”

Some themes that were in this documentary include hope, fear, censorship, and standing up for what you believe in. Hope is the driving force for Ai Weiwei. The only reason why he does what he does is because he believes that there is a chance for a better China. Another theme in the film is fear. Ai Weiwei is always living in fear. Ai Weiwei has to act brave even when he is afraid. He says “If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.” We also see fear in The Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang. The Jiang family is living in constant fear of the red guards and being arrested. They deal with this fear in a very different way than Ai Weiwei. Ai Weiwei acts brave while the Jiang family has trouble sleeping. Another theme that we see in the documentary Ai Weiwei Never Sorry is censorship. The film shows how much the Chinese government censors the internet. The Chinese government blocks twitter and they withheld the names of all of the kids that died in the Sichuan earthquake. Ai Weiwei's name is one of the many things that China censors on the internet. "They all ask: Why? Why is it that this man’s name [Ai Weiwei] can never be typed on a Chinese computer or the whole sentence will disappear?"  The final, and most important theme in this film is stand up for what you believe in. Ai Weiwei stands up for what he believes in even though it endangers him. Ai Weiwei is also a very inspirational person. At the demolition of Ai Weiwei’s art studio, hundreds of people came, even though they put themselves in danger. "Citizens should bear the responsibility to act."

The quality of this film was phenomenal. As a viewer, I was able to relate it to real life. We hear lots of news from China these days, and the documentary on Ai Weiwei showed a first hand experience on what was going on in China. In many of Ai Weiwei’s art pieces, he is giving the middle finger. Ai Weiwei used this symbol to show his displeasure about the current Chinese government. The documentary uses the symbol and the meaning of the middle finger to great affect.  

This film was very interesting, It gave the viewers a real sense of what is going on in China today with all of the internet censorship.