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THE thought of having someone control what you are allowed to do on the internet is unthinkable in modern democracies where our rights to freedom of speech are protected at a constitutional level and censorship is entrusted to the individual or immediate guardian of a minor.
So when confronted with a challenge to those rights our minds immediately resist the imposed control.
I had the pleasure of spending last week in Beijing as the guest of Chinese computer giant Lenovo. I spent three days engaging in culturally expanding conversations and meals with people from all over the world, but mostly China. And I ran up against the great firewall of China almost immediately.
See no evil
In case you weren't already aware of it, the internet is heavily regulated in China, where the government imposes filtering on access.
Any online pornography is blocked outright and one cannot access Twitter, Facebook or Youtube along with a bunch of other sites and services.
The government also insists that manufacturers install software on new computers shipped in China that further block access to pornography and other content deemed undesirable.
There are a number of reasons for the blockages. For one, the Chinese government aims to stamp out what it considers religious cults that may be damaging to members.
One of these is the highly controversial Falun Gong, which was invented in 1992 and has picked up in popularity in recent years. Followers of Falun Gong insist that theirs is a benign ideology based on ancient Qigong practices.
Sceptics have expressed their disapproval of Falun Gong, however, and the Buddhist Association has also voiced concerns about the movement.
The Chinese government has deemed Falun Gong a harmful cult and banned it, along with any websites used to support the movement. And, thanks to a Falun Gong group on Facebook, the world's most popular social network, is one of the websites blocked.
One thing I learned on my trip to Beijing, and previous travels to Hong Kong, is that the Chinese are intensely pragmatic people. Western-style mysticism just doesn't seem practical to them, for example. And when it comes to sorting out any social disruption they take the quickest and most obvious route.
If something is deemed wrong, it must be banned. End of story.
Of course, hippies in the West who have no notion of the realities in China only stoke the fire when they turn their attention to causes like the plight of Falun Gong practitioners or the liberty of Tibet.
Outlining the realities on the ground is a discussion for another time and place - suffice it to say that an infusion of misguided passion, language barriers and a lack of critical thinking only make things worse, for both the people actively involved in supporting a cause on the ground, and their opposition who believe they have legitimate reasons for combating it.
Can't fight the net
But when it comes to the online world, censorship is simply impossible. It was the outspoken libertarian John Gilmore who said "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" in 1993.
His observation was amazingly astute given the time. It is even more applicable to the modern web and rise of social media that creates a powerful matrix for discourse on any subject.
It took me mere minutes in my Beijing hotel room to remotely access a server I lease in the United States and use a text-based web browser to access any content I wanted.
I could have also used proxy servers or a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the great firewall of China, and I later learned that online Twitter client Hootsuite is invisible to the filtering, allowing for indirect access to the popular micro-blogging site.
My Kindle ebook reader was also able to access Twitter and Facebook via its wireless internet connection.
Chinese internet filtering is the most sophisticated in the world and not only is it possible to get around it - it's dead simple.
Information wants to be free and people have always found a way to provide it as such. The only person who can truly decide what you access online is yourself.
Barack Obama was in China during the same week as I, to cuddle up to the country that practically owns his in terms of foreign debt, and managed to work in a suggestion to the Chinese that they ease up on internet filtering. I fear it fell on deaf ears, however.
I left China having tweeted and accessed Facebook throughout. Had I wanted to access porn it would have been a trivial affair.
But I did gain some perspective on why the Chinese do what they do - although I'm still nowhere near fully realising the full realities of the world's fastest growing economy, which makes it difficult for me to condemn what they do outright .
And I apologise in advance to my editors for causing Fin24.com to be blocked by the great firewall.
- Fin24.com
