October 31, 2006

Blogspot is Back!
After close to a week of Blogspot being down (i.e. censored in China), it's now back up for business! I can still publish posts when it's down, but I can't easily look at other blogs. Now I have to reading to catch up on.
*Update: it seems that Blogspot is 'down' again after being up for half a day. Here's an interesting article about a Chinese official who claimed at a UN summit that the internet is not at all censored in China.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you run across much political censorship? I mean do people discuss politics; world, national or local?

I've never been to a dictatorship type of country so I am curious what gets discussed if anything.

Don't get in trouble!!!!!

Stephen said...

Good question -it's something I'm still trying to figure out actually. Reading the English language China Daily is quite interesting, for the choice of stories and language.

In terms of people I've talked with, any tour guide will tell you about the excesses and negative aspects of the Cultural Revolution on some of the monuments.
I've had other people tell me voluntarily about corruption in the government, having to work in the fields, and other more recent 'problems'. Sometimes the same people seem quite guarded. I don't know if people don't mind talking to me because I'm a foreigner, because we were speaking English, or what. Whatever the case, American politics seem to be a favourite of everybody!