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February 17, 2010
Wednesday
 
 
Samizdata quote of the day
Brian Micklethwait (London)  Asian affairs • Slogans/quotations

I was in a (US) bookstore when a group of young Chinese (15 – 25 years, I’d guess) tourist/students entered. While I was there, they bought a stack of Dalai Lama books, saying they were not available in China. They also bought several recent histories on China, saying that they liked to be able to compare with the histories they got in China, to keep track of what the government was changing/denying. Additionally, they said they were getting in less sight-seeing than they had planned, as they were enjoying the web w/o government filters, especially on searches.

There are a lot of implications there.

- commenter "J2" on this

Comments

Hopefully they will move to America and become citizens.


Posted by jso at February 18, 2010 02:10 AM

Hardly surprising, but it is gratifying.


Posted by Alsadius at February 18, 2010 02:28 AM

Can we keep them and send Tom Friedman to China in exchange? Pretty please?


Posted by lukas at February 18, 2010 03:54 AM

"Let's find out what lies the imperialists are telling!"

China is developing. Into something, but not necessarily into us; perhaps into something that hasn't been seen yet.


Posted by Cynic in Asia at February 18, 2010 04:47 AM

Of course, the Chinese can be inscrutable. Maybe these 'browsers' are really the Chinese equivalent of the KGB. Now they know what books to ban from the 'net! How could we tell what they'll do with the books?


Posted by Nuke Gray at February 18, 2010 05:33 AM

Perhaps we can also send them Michael Moore in an exchange, although he is probably too much of a communist for them.


Posted by Johnathan Pearce at February 18, 2010 08:18 AM

He's probably too much of anything for them.


Posted by Alisa at February 18, 2010 10:07 AM

I thought China had agreed to stop imports of toxic waste from Western nations?


Posted by Tim Carpenter (Libertarian Party) at February 18, 2010 11:20 AM

"Hopefully they will move to America and become citizens."

How? The immigration restrictions are so tight it's almost impossible to move there legally without marrying an American


Posted by Kev at February 18, 2010 05:20 PM

A Chinese person who bought a copy of "Mao: The Untold Story" in front of other Chinese - or took the work back to China.......

Well such people may exist (I hope they do) - but they are brave indeed.


Posted by Paul Marks at February 18, 2010 08:48 PM

Hedrick Smith, a Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, once invited a group of Komsomol members to his apartment for a dinner party. Smith had placed several copies of "Gulag Archiepelago" in Russian around his apartment. After his guests left, Smith found what he had expected, that every copy of the book had disappeared. It's quite possible that the Komsomols had swiped the books because they had value on the black market. But, it's equally possible that they were more curious about the book than fearful of being caught with it.


Posted by Jack Olson at February 19, 2010 03:32 PM

Here in the US, we have to read the British papers via the internet to learn about Climategate. Btw, our politicians and the Media are still pushing for cap-and-trade to avoid global warming. Record snow in DC was due to global warming, for sure, man made too.

Thank AlGore for creating the internet. Now the Chinese and the Americans can compare notes. The Chinese are censored by their govt., the Americans are censored by the current govt.'s propaganda branch.


Posted by ic at February 20, 2010 05:48 AM

ic - Climategate has been well covered by Fox News and by talk radio.

However, yes, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN (and of course PBS) have not exactly covered themselves in glory. But their TASK is to cover up some things and to lie and distort others - to compain about the "mainstream" media being collectivist liars is like complaining about water being wet.

The same is true of "mainstream" print journalism - the New York Times and the newspapers who follow it, plus Time and Newsweek.

It is surely time for Ayn Rand's "Sanction of the Victim".

Just stop watching the "free" news, and stop buying the "mainstream" newspapers and magazines. This is what more and more people are doing anyway.

It is not just the internet that is killing the msm - it is more and more people starting to understand just how despicable the msm are.


Posted by Paul Marks at February 23, 2010 01:21 PM
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