"Censors and Senselessness," or "Scared By My Own Shadow"

As GOP Vixen pointed out, I have discovered that many Websites I have attempted to access while in China simply aren't there.  They are blocked by the government, and all you get when you click on them is a 404 error.  This did not come as a great surprise to me, as China's control of political discourse, especially on the Internet, is long-standing.

What was more puzzling, however, was the logic -- or lack thereof -- behind what gets banned and what does not.  One of my early theories held that American sites with overtly partisan references -- i.e., "GOP Vixen" -- get the ax.  But that theory began to unravel soon after I propounded it.

Among the sites banned in China (aside from GOP Vixen), along with some conjecture:

• GayPatriot: An American patriot?  And a fag too?  Oh, that's right out!
• AMERICABlog: They are probably banned because the Chinese assume that "The AMERICABlog" must clearly be a bunch of pro-American, jingoist cowboys.  If they only knew that "AMERICABlog" was actually doing the PRC's work for them -- a veritable fifth column of leftist/socialist fanaticism -- I'm sure they would reconsider.
• The RNC: Horton hatches a theory.
• Democrats.org: More evidence.
• Strangely, the party congressional committee sites are not banned.  The Chinese seem to understand that Congress wouldn't have any real power if you put 4 million volts through it.
• www.anonymizer.com
• Pink is the New Blog, Wannabeleader, Atrios, Iraq the Model ... in fact, anything hosted by Blogger or Blogspot is banned, except for blogger.com itself.  Note to Blogger customers: switch ISPs, now! When about one-fifth of the world's potential Internet users have no hope of ever seeing your site, that doesn't bode well.
• So why would China ban an entire blogging site?  Is its CEO Taiwanese?
• Speaking of which, the Republic of China's (Taiwan's) official government site is banned.  Duh.
• Oddly, http://www.roc-taiwan.org is not.
• Human Rights in China is banned.
• Google.com was banned (temporarily, at least, after I Googled "human rights in China")
• So is the news-search function of Google.
• But not Yahoo's news search.  China knows who the top dog is.
• GeorgeWBush.com: Hey, no fair!  He loves the Internets!

Not banned:

• Michelle Malkin
• DailyKos: If only the Chinese knew that DailyKos = "AMERICABlog" = Atrios = ...
• DemocraticUnderground: There goes most of my theory about party labels.  (The Chinese have obviously mistaken small-D "democrats" with the partisan hackery of DU.)
• Democrats.com: Zuh?
• Drudge
• Wonkette
• BoiFromTroy
• TownHall.com
• LGF
• Instapundit
• National Review: Umm, hello?  Nordlinger?!
• Towleroad
• Rush Limbaugh
• Ann Coulter
• Fleshbot.  P-O-R-N is A-O-K.
• Rosie.com
• Andrew Sullivan
• WhiteHouse.gov
• CrooksAndLiars
• OpinionJournal
• And me.  Typepad blogs tend not to be verboten, for some reason.

My question is, with all of the innocuous stuff that is being blocked, and the comparable sites that are not, why even bother?  Is this just the result of some extremely lazy algorithm somewhere?

So let's play a game of Stump the Censors.  If there's a site you'd like me to test while I'm here, email me the URL (or post in comments).  Your deadline is Wednesday morning when I leave.  (Remember, I'm 12 hours ahead of NYC time.)

I got a good scare during my early blogging in China, incidentally.  After about a day of blogging and surfing the Web, I checked in on my StatCounter page.  I noticed that there was someone in the same obscure western province that I was who was taking far too much interest in my site.

Over the span of a single day, he/she had made 33 separate entries, the last of which lasted for about 5 hours.  They were nosing around my China posts, as well as the comments section.

I noticed that the IP address belonged to the state-run Internet network.  That's when I panicked.  Visions of my hotel room door being broken down in the middle of the night danced in my head.  I quickly logged on an deleted anything from my posts that could be remotely offensive or critical of the government -- even my description of food as tasting like "warm vomit."  (I apologize for not divulging this sooner, but I was truly concerned for my own safety.)

I felt physically ill.  I had to take a Xanax just to get to sleep.

Then the next morning, I realized that the function that blocks my own IP address as a visitor to my own site only works when I log in from home or from work.  Non-geek translation: The person who had been watching me so intently ... was me.  You might say that I was scared by my own shadow.

I felt so fucking stupid.  But I do wonder if the paranoia wears off after living here longer, or if it just gets worse.

Comments

[Aatom]

Love the scared of your own shadow story. It has a piercing human echo to it and shows how authoritarian cultures use pressure points of fear (some real but many imagined) in order to maintain their grip on the populace.

[Alan]

When I was living there in July and August of 2003, it was a lot more open. I almost never came across anything that was blocked. I was able to access Gaydar, many political sites and the BBC (which is currently banned, according to my friend living there).

Here in the UAE, I can, surprisingly get most blogs, though several that are recommended by other blogs are banned, including towelrod and any that have the words gay, sex, porn, etc in the title. As far as other websites, they tend to concentrate on sexual materials, pro-Israeli sites and anything that critisizes Islam or the government. When I first arrived here, I thought it was much better organized that China, but I can see that China is getting better in their surveilance and censorship techniques.

[will]

Well, I am a Chinses right here in Beijing. I actually feel so lucky to access this site while it has not been blocked yet. Talking about human-rights and democracy in this country, Jesus can someone get me out of here?
BTW, I'm gay, and I love malcontent!