I rant a lot in this space about how we in education censor our students’ use of the web.
But most schools have nothing on the leaders of Beijing, China where one blog was pulled off the web because of posts complaining about government policy.
Concerning the size of dogs.
Specifically, about a municipal government regulation which says residents may not own a dog over 35 centimeters high (about 14 inches). And they may own only one.
China is one place where they really take their censorship seriously.
Criticism of government policies and nonconformist political views, however, are not taken lightly in China.
More than 30,000 censors are employed to monitor the Internet alone, specialists estimate. They are equipped with advanced technology to block sensitive sites and sound the alarm when words deemed off-color or politically incorrect show up on the screen. The system, part of a vast apparatus extending to newspapers, theaters and art galleries, remains part of life for most people in a China otherwise modernizing at breakneck speed.
I know some teachers in our overly-large school district who think the IT department also has a group of people monitoring all network traffic.
No offense to anyone in IT, but they just aren’t that organized or that well equipped.
They’re very good at censoring websites in China. A teacher in my school goes there every summer. She was able to read my blog in summer 06, but by summer 07 it was banned.
I think there’s a website somewhere where you can check to find out whether or not your site is banned in China.