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“The government fears unrest and social instability. Sex is a major factor of instability.”
-Mu Zimei, 24
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In 1999, a young Chinese woman called Mu Zimei (left)
published an account of her sexual experiences on her blog.
China's sex life hasn't been the same since. When she wrote about
having sex with a rock star, one of her estimated 70 lovers, she
caused an Internet traffic jam, attracting more than 100,000 visits
in two weeks. When a book of her blog was published, it was
banned and a Beijing sociologist said she'd polluted the public.
Now, she can only write for overseas publishers. “Everything in
mainland China would be censored instantly. In movies and the
media, everything about sex as pleasure is banned. Yet everyone
talks about sex more than ever. The system doesn't correspond to
social reality.” In the past, she says, Chinese dynasties had a more
tolerant attitude to sex. Perhaps it's only a matter of time. “Things
are evolving slowly. Open–minded people like me have to talk
within a certain frame, and slowly we'll push back its limits.”
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“I have never been afraid
of being hurt because of my work. That is the last thing I'm afraid of.”
-Wen Chong, 30
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Wen Chong was at home in the Chinese town of Zhong Shang
when four men came into his house, beat him up and severed his
right middle and index fingers, which they took away with them.
Wen is a reporter for Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis
News), a Guangzhou newspaper that is probably the most independent
in mainland China. NDB stories–including reports on the SARS
outbreak and on corruption–regularly anger people in power: Its
editor Chen Yizhong has been imprisoned in the past, and two
reporters are serving eight and six years in jail on trumped–up
corruption charges. Triads, or Chinese organized crime gangs,
don't like the paper's investigations either, so they were the
immediate suspects in the attack on Wen. Wen himself, in an
interview made possible by our correspondent's sneaking into his
well-guarded hospital, didn't dispute it. “When you are a reporter,”
he said, “you take risks. I love news reporting and I'm not going to
stop. I'll just type more slowly.” Later, however, another Guangzhou
paper reported that police had detained four men hired by Wen's
ex-girlfriend to take revenge on the man who had dumped her. For
now, the only apparent certainty in the story is that the going rate
for a two-finger amputation in Zhong Shang is 50,000 yuan (or
US$3,020 a finger).
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“This message contains
a banned expression; please delete this expression.”
-Government warning on websites
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“China operates the most extensive, technologically
sophisticated, and broad–reaching system of Internet filtering in
the world,” according to a recent report by the OpenNet Initiative.
Highly sophisticated filters can block up to 500,000 Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) simultaneously, leave some parts of a website
accessible while blocking others, and make e–mails disappear.
Technological surveillance is backed up with the human kind:
Thousands of state employees are thought to monitor web traffic,
and 800 Internet Security Monitors will soon be dispatched to
cyber cafés. A 1996 decree obliges anyone who signs up to an ISP
to report to a police station within 60 days, while new regulations
mean foreigners can only log on by inputting their passport
number. And who is helping in this powerful and intricate
clampdown on Internet freedom? Western companies desperate to
do business with China: Firewalls and filtering systems have been
provided by the American Cisco Systems, while Chinese Internet
users wanting to start blogs on a site hosted by US company
Microsoft are told that “democracy,” “human rights” and
“Tiananmen” are examples of “prohibited language,” and advised
to find an alternative.
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