Posted on 01/25/2010 4:58:34 AM PST by robertvance
Anyone in China who has the desire to access a blocked website can do it with relative ease – and for free. There are literally hundreds of services that can bypass the Chinese censors.
The key to all of this, as I have already alluded to, is the ability to read English.
The Chinese government may be very efficient at erasing politically harmful Chinese content off the web and out of reach of even proxies, but it has little control over English content that is posted in other countries.
Or even in its own country – where the best way to get away with writing about a politically sensitive topic is to post it in English.
In many ways, living under censorship is not mandatory in China. It is a choice.
(Excerpt) Read more at teachabroadchina.com ...
Hey Dave, this ping’s for you.
Maybe the government isn't stupid and this isn't an accident... like Christian proselytizing in the middle east.
Not sure where that number comes from. I guess it depends on how you define ‘speaking English’ but many put the number at around 300 million English speakers in China which would be over 25% of the population. And that number is rising everyday.
youtube.com is very well understood, even by those who don’t speak English.
It’s easy to simply block sites like that, or political blogs.
On a second thought, it is true that information in English is more likely to be found here than info in Chinese. But that’s almost too stupid to remark upon.
Yes, Chinese people who want to understand more about the world will try English on the internet.
As for percentages, I can’t say. Remember, China differs from the big city to the remote rural area.
When I walk into the Papa John’s pizza, they look uncomfortable but finally find the girl closest to school age to have the rudimentary ordering talk with me.
And her English is a hell of a lot better than my Chinese.
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