Michael Anti: Behind the Great Firewall of China


Published on Jul 30, 2012 by TED

Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet — “All the servers are in Beijing” — he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national public sphere in the country’s history, and shifting the balance of power in unexpected ways.

Michael Anti (Zhao Jing), a key figure in China’s new journalism, explores the growing power of the Chinese internet. Full bio »
http://www.ted.com/speakers/michael_a…

11 thoughts on “Michael Anti: Behind the Great Firewall of China

  1. So I guess we should just ignore the attack on our right to free speech being launched by Google Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft, and just adopt the Chinese approach. Is that why we’re seeing this now?

    THIS ISN’T CHINA….. and I don’t care how they fight censorship, and nor will I be reduced to their tactics when our Bill of Rights guarantees my right to free expression. (and this narrator needs to spit the marbles out of his mouth before his next public speaking engagement)

    1. Yes, you have that right to free speech.

      But how they get you is that you don’t own the medium that gives you an audience. Control the medium (Example MSM! and now Interweb Main Stream Media as Google Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft) for control of the speech.

    2. Excellent points, JR, yet these tactics could be useful UNTIL we take the whole house down. Question is, what do we do in the mean time?
      It’s like so many other things, we’ve just had to use our ingenuity to get around, by pass, etc.. all this crap control.

      Yes, he was difficult to understand as his accent was very strong, yet I believe he got his points across quite well.

  2. Excellent video, alot of great points regarding what Americans can learn regarding the Chinese people and how they’ve gotten around the censorship imposed upon their free access to information and communicating with one another.

      1. I’m not sure about a smart phone but if using a computer just click on the icon from the video player that says CC in a white box with a red underline.

  3. “We Chinese fight for our freedom, you [America and the West] just watch your bad cats [referring to the governments and companies pushing censorship being cats and we being the mouse]. Don’t let them hook [up} with the Chinese cats. Only in this way, in the future, we will achieve the dreams of the mouse: that we can tweet anytime, anywhere without fear.”

    You can find this quote at 17:33, looks like we failed at not letting the Western cats hook up with the Chinese cats. No wonder there was almost zero reporting on the UN acquisition of the internet domain naming system.

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