Another Great Wall of China

China implements censors of content on the Internet. To facilitate this, they created a very complex system of filters as well as human monitors that allow them to control what the 140 million Chinese Internet browsers view.

According to Reuters, the latest censor activity was to block access to Flickr, a common picture sharing site. Yang Zhou, a Chinese resident, is very upset about this latest block; he was attempting to view a friend's holiday pictures on Flickr, but because of China's "firewall", his access was blocked.

Why was access to Flickr blocked? In 1989, there was a massacre in the Tiananmen Square. Images of this event were posted on Flickr, so the censors blocked access to the site for all of its citizens.

Many other popular sites, such as Wikipedia, have been blocked by the censors. This includes numerous blog sites and discussion boards.

The Chinese government states that the "Great Firewall" is necessary to ensure that their citizens enjoy a "healthy" online experience, and to create a harmonious society, accroding to Reuters.

Yang, along with many other citizens, disagrees with this sentiment. According to Reuters, Yang says, "I just want to look at some photos! What's wrong with that?" This outlook is typical of young professionals like Yang. They are becoming increasingly annoyed with these governmental intrusions into their lives.

China's middle class citizens are always striving to get privacy. According to Reuters, Nicholas Bequelin, from Hong Kong Human Rights Watch, says "[Privacy is] the first thing people seek when they have the resources. We see this growing in China in the wake of ideas of ownership and property."

This struggle for privacy between China's citizens and its government is not only related to the Internet. Many other struggles have arisen and have even become violent.

In Bobai county, local officials had given fines to families who had ignored family planning laws and had more children than the law allows. Farmers stormed local government offices, smashing the buildings and burning cars to express their unhappiness.