Beijing, your web users have a problem: The internet in China may soon run out. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, under the current allocation speed, China’s IPv4 address resources can only meet the demand of 830 more days and if no proper measures are taken by then, new Chinese netizens will not…
Showing all posts tagged China
Whoring is cheap
How much would you expect to be paid for spruiking the wonders online of your government? (In China, a 50-cent army, estimated to be around 300,000 “soldiers”, are busy spreading propaganda.)
Shame about that censorship side
The behemoth grows: In just 10 years, it has spawned a verb, revolutionised the media and made billionaires of its founders. Now Google has broken into the definitive list of the 10 most valuable global brands. What would the Chinese think, suffering under Google-assited web filtering?
Yes, it’s a dictatorship
Don’t be under any illusion about China’s post Olympic Games attitude to human rights: While the start of this week marked the beginning of the month of Ramadan for Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims, China’s Communist authorities are reportedly cracking down on Muslim religious activity. The Web site for the town of Yingmaili currently lists nine rules…
The Chinese lynch mob
Welcome to China, the world’s biggest internet market: Wang Fei’s infidelity deeply upset his wife. She wrote of her distress in a diary, and then jumped from their 24th-floor balcony. Her family posted details of Wang Fei’s affair on the Internet, angrily blaming him for his wife’s suicide. Soon, tens of thousands of Chinese Web…
Beating the western drum
My following essay appears in the Guardian today: During the recent war between Georgia and Russia, bloggers on both sides of the conflict provided searing accounts of atrocities and manoeuvres unseen by western journalists. In a country such as Russia the space for alternative and critical views are rare. The war showed an authoritarian regime’s…
Holidays in blogging hell
The following post is by Phil Gomes on one of Australia’s most popular blog sites Larvatus Prodeo: In The Blogging Revolution Antony Loewenstein takes us on a personal journey through some of the more difficult places in the world to blog. Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China. It’s a timely book on the…
Multinational still beware
Web commentator Nicholas Carr argues, a little too cleverly, that Google’s aims are rather like benevolent dictators: Google differs from Microsoft in at least one very important way. The ends that Microsoft has pursued are commercial ends. It’s been in it for the money. Google, by contrast, has a strong messianic bent. The Omnigoogle is…
The “state secrets” myth
The price for speaking out politically in China. Bloggers are on the front line of dissent.
Bloggers lead revolution
The following article by Matthew Ricketson appears in today’s Melbourne Age: Blogging is an inelegant term for an often inelegant activity. It is easy to be turned off by bloggers for whom civil discourse equates to personal insult — anonymously delivered — but this undersells the vast range of blogging swirling through cyberspace. Antony Loewenstein…