Chinese Word Games, Part II

While we’ve all had problems with various websites in China, you can put your conspiracy theories away. It’s now official. If you can’t access a specific website like BBC or Google or falungong or Tibetan sites it’s just a network or hardware problem, not a censorship issue. According to a government official at a UN report yesterday, China “doesn’t have restrictions at all” on the internet.Of course, almost everyone outside of China has heard about the extent of censorship of the internet in China—the Great Firewall of China is (in)famous. Estimates are that more than 20,000 sites are continuously monitored and blocked in China. Most recently Wikipedia and Blogspot were just un-blocked in August of this year.Bold face lies Alternative interpretations are common in China where official policy is more important than acknowledged reality. For me the biggest surprise was the incredulous responses from the attendant journalists rather than the official pronouncement. Really, what else do you expect Chinese officials to say?!In the same report this well versed official also said that there are no restrictions on journalist in China either. In fact he claimed that journalists with “legal problems” have “nothing to do with freedom of expression.”From the article:In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all.Nick Gowing, BBC anchor and session moderator: Would you like to elaborate on that?Chinese official: How can I elaborate on it if we don't have any restrictions?Some people say that there are journalists in China that have been arrested. We have hundreds of journalists in China, and some of them have legal problems. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression.For the complete report, read this.