At Least the Great Firewall is not a Prison Wall

When China added Gmail to their Great Firewall, I saw a complaint from an American game developer based in China (on Facebook somehow) that web censorship was his top “daily aggravation” and that, plus pollution, are the main reasons he would never start a business in China.

Sure, those are sucky, but that’s like saying you’d never live in North Korea because of the winters and lack of HBO. Let’s get some perspective — missing out on your email is one thing, but Chinese citizens end up in hard labor camps from blogging or having democracy dinner conversation (I sometimes wonder if China is propping up North Korea so they look good in comparison).

That year (last year) an activist who was jailed months earlier on her way to the airport to speak at a UN human rights meeting died from lack of medical attention (and probably torture). This is the type of stuff we used to portray in anti-Soviet movies during the Cold War. I was in Hong Kong for less than six months at the time, and I felt like I was living next to the Death Star (actually, the Empire — Star Wars, not British — ) in comparison didn’t seem all that bad — I think they mostly had a PR problem., with the TV playing six channels of state television, Hong Kong reporters mysteriously attacked by mainland gangs, and the Chinese government making veiled threats about what would happen at the next Occupy protest, and just recently, Hong Kong booksellers have been disappearing.

So if you have qualms about doing business in China, there are plenty of moral qualms you can pick from: for starters just read the overview from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the wikipedia entries on human rights in China. Some of this stuff is Hard to Believe. With the extended holiday of Chinese New Year upon us, I hope the torturers, kidnappers and organ harvesters are taking a break.