Chinese bad romance.

Freedom of speech and Internet are supposed to be the perfect couple since plurality and thousand pages of information about any topic maintain alive their love’s flame. As a normal marriage, they experience some rows like Wikileaks or the Sinde Law, but they always get reconciled saying “we are democracy’s most powerful expression. It doesn´t matter the existence of annoying people like hackers or Anonymous because they are cybercriminals” .Satisfied with the excuse, they sleep together again as if nothing had happened. Every country and relationship has secrets, even the most democratic one. We don’t have to wash the dirty linen in public, but when it comes to countries like China, we are talking about the laundry. This fantastic couple splits up when Governments strick their (big) nose in their business. This meddler lover makes them to sign up the divorce with one word:censorship. Chinese Government has drawn its authoritarian modern expression under the excuse of protecting morals, national security and ethics. Their Facebook is called  renren and Google exists, but censoring pornographic considered content and political events like the Tiannmen killing or number 64, being substituted by their official search engine, Baidu. 

Mainstream population does agree with this because they have been educated to blindly trust their Government. If they initiate a campaign against Google describing it as pervert and pornographic enemy, they will believe it. A Chinese teacher commented me one day that they could access to international servers by getting a foreign IP direction, but there are nonconformists who protest against this situation. Last February 20th we could watch in Shangai and Hong Kong’s streets lots of Chinese students who were

organized by a mysterious American webpage called Boxum  to Spread up the Jasmine´s

Revolution. It was not an important group of people and they were dispersed without any complication.   

Apart from this,China enjoys a protest platform run in foreign countries called China Digital Times,  an online newspaper where is possible to read about how the Internet problem works in the voice of European and American people. Forgetting what happened on February, there is not a solid activism because of the “informatization” into all spheres of life.Why? It´s logical: cyberactivism needs social networks, and if they are controlled by the Government…where is the action? On the other hand, the Jasmine´s Revolution has fewer possibilities to success in China than in Muslim countries for reasons like these (among others): its society is not as polarized as the Muslim one, where there are plenty of poverty stricken areas. If you can´t feed your family, you´ll be angry with the Government. China will beat the USA by 2030…   such a powerful country must be really economically developed, isn´t it?  Second, Muslim webs are not as inhibited as Chinese ones. They enjoy Facebook and Twitter, so their desperation for democracy was a bomb that would explode sooner or later. Third-as a curiosity- This kind of revolution is usually made by young people, and Chinese students do not have enough time to enjoy any kind of social networks because of the amount of work they are obliged to do…Even on Weekends they are made to go to school!

This “democratic” relationship we’ve mentioned before does not have any future in countries like China… yet. Cyber activism can turn into a powerful tool in the Great Asiatic…Why not? Democratic or not, it is time to assume that 100% Governmental transparency is a fairy tale, if not What’s the point of politics? Cyberactivists, you have lots of homework to do…