The Jerusalem Globalist - The Israeli student perspective on China

The Jerusalem Globalist is both a magazine and a community of undergraduates interested in foreign affairs and international issues.

The Jerusalem Globalist is looking for writers and articles for their third issue. The first time I encountered the magazine was when I attended a seminar about the question of whether China is the next super-power. At that time it was only in print, and I was quite impressed with some of the articles there, especially when considering that it’s written by undergraduate students in a magazine which isn’t profit oriented.

The second Jerusalem Globalist, now online, had two interesting articles in subjects that relate to things I write about, and I’ll try to translate some bits from Hebrew. I’m trying to omit problematic keywords bu to still get the main idea through. I must say that those articles do not reflect my own thoughts on those issues in anyway and that I’m quoting those here because I find the Israeli student perspective on China fascinating  :

Tibet from a different angle

The west is almost always sympathetic towards the Tibetan struggle with China. Ziv Lidror went to Tibet and found out that, surprisingly, reality is a lot more complicated.

 

On the Train I met Hao Fei, a Chinese student with fluent English… The Tibetan conflict wasn’t the first issue I was curious about, but after a few hours of talking about the Communist regime and the way that the modern Chinese perceives Mao Tze Tong (“70% good, 30% bad”) there was still time for me to hear about Tibet. After all, we had 32 hours to spend on the train together.

At first, I wasn’t able to explain myself. Turns out that China doesn’t recognize Tibet in that name but rather as a province… “The difference between Tibetans and other minorities”, he explains, “is that Tibetans wouldn’t accept the Chinese role… Ofcourse there were terrible things happening during the Mao period, but it affected all of China, and not just Tibet… Their poverty isn’t only about the Chinese government but also about their religion that tells them to make do with little…”.

When I arrived in Beijing I met a professor and two students. The professor claimed that China is becoming more human-rights aware for all, especially minorities, and explained why there’s no contradiction between human-rights and Communism.

 

(Article summary: ) I do not undermine the Tibetan right for freedom… But, claiming independence is not necessarily the best solution for their awful situation. This is the conclusion that was reached by some of the Tibetan leadership, and maybe it’s time that the international community would acknowledge as well…

The article you wouldn’t be able to read in China

About Internet, censorship, and a billion Chinese

 

In China, where all media is controlled, the Internet becomes another censored medium. The Chinese mechanism is so advanced that the average Chinese isn’t even aware of the international discussion happening about the Chinese censorship.

… from 100,000 internet users in 1997 to 94 million users in 2005. The number continues to raise to 130 million if you take into account the internet-café users, so the Chinese Internet market is second only to the US and by 2010 is predicted to become number one.

… November 2000, when the government announced “Golden Shield” project, the last of national projects in the field of information technologies. The goal was said  to strengthen defense and crime-fighting, but in reality the project is used to monitor Internet information… If you’ve been in China in the last decade and you emailed, surfed the web or joined in a chat, then … don’t worry, somebody knows about it.

The Chinese government embraced and developed the Internet market while designing a supervising mechanisms supported by constitutional law and a technological infrastructure…

Searching for “problematic” words or phrases will not yield actual results. Surfing to “problematic” sites like Amnesty will lead to an error message. Emails with “problematic” content will not reach their targets, without notifying the sender. Trying to surf a porn site in an Internet café will be blocked and monitored by surveliance cameras. Anti-government blogs might be blocked. The publishing members, both the blog owner, the internet café owner and even the blogplatform company might all face prison for a period of over 10 years…

 

The Chinese do not feel that their network is completely censored. 54% of the Chinese see the Internet as a tool that allows them to critisise the governemtn and 60% believe that the Internet has resulted in a more attentive government to the people’s needs…

Prof Marvin Samuels, a visitng professor in the east-Asia department at the Hebrew University, agrees that the question isn’t whether to supervise the Internet but how… The boundries of censorship aren’t clear so you can read criticism about the government in one website but not the other.

… Two researchers show a different perspective and suggest that the Chinese control over the Internet is far from perfect, reaching only 10% of the enormous Chinese population. It seems that the censors and the Internet users are playing a cat-mouse game. The censors are developing advanced techniques to control information while the users find their own methods to bypass censorship and say what ever they want.

Some of their articles are translated to English over time. Their website is up on : http://www.yale.edu/globalist/jerusalem/index.html

 
tags: Asia-Israel connections, China