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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Cracks in the Chinese Wall -- Prosperity isn't Enough Anymore |
| 2005-01-26 |
| Wall Street Journal. Given in full. China's leaders may have convinced themselves that the country's relatively new, albeit unbalanced, material prosperity will be enough to keep an uneasy population from peering into some of the darker corners of the country's Communist history. And the popular reaction (or lack thereof) to purged former leader Zhao Ziyang's death last week appears to prove them right at first glance. The relative tranquility does make it appear as if young Chinese, intoxicated by the opportunities of China's dizzying economic growth, don't really understand -- or care -- about what really happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989, or why Zhao's sympathies with the student protesters led to his downfall. But that is not exactly the case. Increased access to information through the Internet, which is just one of the many fruits of China's development, is producing a predicament for China's leadership. China's pragmatic leaders undoubtedly saw allowing widespread access to the Internet as necessary for growth, but hoped to rein in its power by using firewalls to block "unsavory" information. But the Internet has only endowed citizens with a heightened awareness of the amount of information that is being blocked. When Zhao died last week, his passing was mostly observed in silence. State media played down the death, if it was reported at all, and relevant Web sites were often either sterilized or blocked entirely. But some Chinese, rather than quietly observe the systematic blockage of news, turned to the few tools at their disposal, and used the Internet to both obtain and spread information. The Internet, in fact, served as a forum for Chinese to congregate and express their mourning or, more often, frustration. While many Chinese went online to pay their respects to Zhao, the anger and sadness on these sites often had little to do with the man who died. Comments extracted and translated from discussions on mainland-accessible Chinese-language Web sites in the days following Zhao's death showcase a collective lament for the limits on freedom of information in China today. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |