MisterWebNet

As much as we poked fun at Google's innocence in thinking the Chinese would leave them alone the one good thing to come out of this story (Asides from exposing the Chinese two faced being-nice-while-hacking-every-commercial-company-going charade) is that China's attitude to the internet has been laid bare for all to see.

The Internet for the regime in China is much like the traditional print media - it must be controlled and only carry messages in accordance with official positions. Doing otherwise, might let the plebs see how controlled they are. So it was interesting to hear Wang Chen, the information director for the State Council make a response to the Google allegations of hacking.

Though not mentioning the hacking directly, in a printed statement Mr. Chen did say of the internet “China’s Internet is entering an important stage of development, confronting both rare opportunities and severe challenges,” he said. “Internet media must always make nurturing positive, progressive mainstream opinion an important duty.”

He encouraged Internet companies to increase scrutiny of news or information that might threaten national stability and stressed the importance of “guiding” online public opinion. In other words, feed them the propoganda that we tell you too.

It's astonishing to think that a whole nation of people can be duped and drip fed government approved propaganda. Even Iran hasn't managed to cut off opposing views on the internet, but then again, their not as technologically advanced as the Chinese. Iran's solution to silencing dissenting voices on the internet involves cutting the broadband wires. China has instead developed a complex filtering system that blocks IP's and queries to a 'bad' list.

The only glimmer of hope is that the Chinese people will be smart enough to bypass government filters and get the real news. Not the government version of the news.