I work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned away from anything potentially controversial. The basic attitude is, "Don't risk it", and it's absolutely deadly to creativity and culture. On the one hand, the central government is trying to encourage Chinese culture to "Go Out" and wow the world. On the other, it is absolutely strangling the country's cultural creators.
Another fascinating "censorship" story playing out right now:<p>Tencent Loses $14 Billion After Criticism From Chinese Media<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-hong-kong-stock-exchange-criticism-chinese-media-1202487199/" rel="nofollow">http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-ho...</a><p>To call this "chilling" is a gross understatement!
Probably not Xi's problem but China will lag economically and creatively because of this restriction. It's just ceding the entertainment initiative to other creators, outside of China. Even if they ban all creative content from outside China, don't they know that a terabyte HDD can hold enough movies to last for a year, and be copied easily?
I feel stringent censorship is among the most unbearable things.<p>If we look at the censorship history in different countries over the world, such as France (before the 20th century) and USSR, the only way to end a very stringent censorship in a society is by ending the ruling government itself, which is usually an autocracy, or an oligarchy at best. But that could mean a period of turmoil that would destroy many people's lives across the entire country. It seems one way to avoid this great destruction is for most of the population in the country to rise up in synchrony and simultaneously topple down the government together -- but this concurrency at a society level is one of the major targets that the current censorship implemented in China aims at.<p>Sigh...It just seems impossible to have hack out a consensus in a distributed system when the powerful system admin with his privileges at the root level constantly interferes...
Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for China, but I think that is a big mistake. History has shown that when you don't have open, public debate on important issues, the government becomes close-minded and makes poor decisions. Yes, democracy is messy, but the alternatives are worse.<p>Part of the problem here is that China is still running according to Confucianism, which was a wonderfully effective political philosophy for a largely agrarian society, but is quite ill-suited for the modern world. The Chinese need to think out what is the right form of government for the modern industrial world, but to do that they need free discussion, which is just what Xi is making impossible.
Reuters is blocked in China. China has been "closing" for 5 years now. According to "china watchers", this is expected to continue. Blame Xi.