ch 1 dodson

I honestly knew virtually nothing about the Chinese government before reading Dodson. I was shocked to find out how they use the Internet. It seems to me to be a really negative environment. Although they are using things like The Human Flesh Search Engine to find people who have committed crimes for the greater good of the people, it just kind of strikes me as inappropriate and invasive. Such things should be the responsibility of the government. Maybe they should be spending more time solving crimes that have been put in the public eye than they are deleting pieces of their past and pornography – people are going to find pornography in some way anyways and it doesn’t affect others. I think the situations that are being put into the public eye could very well be ones that families might want to keep to themselves. I guess having help to find betrayers could be a good thing, but it seems to me like people are constantly wound up about things that are happening over the country and I feel like it gives a very negative outlook to the Chinese.

I’m really torn about the idea of censorship at this point. Reading the first chapter gave me the impression that everything that the Chinese are reacting to and seeing on the internet is really negative and I’m not quite sure how I would feel about that.

I am confused at what the Chinese government is trying to get at by censoring certain negative and controversial events because they are a part of China – a part of their culture and history. I feel like the people should be able to be aware of such things.   

My reaction to this chapter was that Dodson really just blatantly threw the information out there and didn’t really hold back, which I appreciated. I think the governments of other countries are things that we should be aware of, and I’m upset that I wasn’t already aware of how other countries, like China, operated.