World Wide Web is Getting A Little Narrower in China

All to often spokesmen must lie, some do so convincingly others...not so much. Such is the case for a Foreign Ministry spokesman in China, who stated that the Chinese government "is not afraid of the internet." But of course they are afraid of the internet. A key to any successful government such as there own is control of the media. If China was not afraid of the internet then they would not employ the largest internet policing force in the world, estimated at about 30,000 officers; that does not seem like the type of reaction a carefree government would make. It seems likely that the Chinese government crashed the YouTube site for its people so that they would not be able to see videos of its soldiers beating Tibetan protesters unconscious, such videos have been showing up recently. With the current economic downturn in the rapidly growing country and the 20th anniversary of Tiannanmen Square massacre in 1989 is looming ahead; it seems the Chinese government is doing all it can to maintain order and prevent any serious civil unrest. As the country has increasingly been exposed to capitalism over the past decade, its people have kept relatively quite due to the strong economy. If the economy does continue to drop, the Chinese will have to contend with a dissatisfied population that has only known progress over the last decade and will likely not want to give up on the strides they have already made.