China Inside Out- Chapter 1

I found this first chapter to be informationally overwhelming but nonetheless very interesting. I have always known that China has very strict and invasive censorship laws but I suppose that I never truly understood how much power the Chinese government has, considering I have been privileged enough to grow up in a democracy. It seems that the government is so constantly fearful of losing control and having inconvenient truths about itself leaked that it goes to great measures to block any content that it finds dissatisfactory. Many Chinese bloggers and internet uses seem to think that it is their right to have access to whatever content they wish to view or at least the right to post what they like (and it is there right in the case of freedom of speech because it is in their constitution). However, it seems that one of the main reasons that the Chinese government shuts down internet content surrounding potential uprisings, for example in the case of Liu Xiaobo, is because often what begins on the internet manifests in a literal and very physical uprising. Also, the government blocks information about events such as Tianenmen Square because it reflects negatively on the government and how they handled it. Imagine if in the United States every time the government handled an issue poorly they had the ability to block U.S. Citizens from knowing about it. Every little minuscule affair some government in Arkansas has everyone knows about it within a matter of hours. Not to say that the government doesn't probably succeed in hiding some things from the public, I'm sure that does happen. However, once something hits the media it is entirely fair game. Another thing that I found interesting was that while in Liu Xiabo was sent to jail for his attempts at breaking from the Communist Party, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year later for his "unwavering stance". It is funny how in China he was a criminal but the rest of the world regarded him almost as a hero. Having recently been presented with the possible opportunity of traveling to China this book is really making me think about how vastly different things are on the other side of the globe and what it would be like to visit there. While China is growing as a world power and while it is one of America's major business powers, there are still parts of their society and government that are so vastly different from our own.