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Internet Bars In China Improving
Thursday, September 1, 2005-6:31 PM
Visitors to China in the future might not have to put up with hot, stuffy, crowded, smoky Internet bars with slow Internet connections, cigarette burnt keyboards, and indifferent staff members if my recent experiences at Internet bars are any indication.
But the new Internet bars might also be more strict about just who uses their computers.
Most of the Internet bars I visit in China are shady establishments on the second or third floors of rundown buildings. Inside, at all hours of the day, young kids, oftentimes smoking and sucking down soda, play video games, watch movies, and talk with their friends online.
The last two Internet bars I visited, one in Urumqi and the other in Guangzhou, were nothing like that. The staff at each bar must have received some training in customer service judging by the way they responded to their customers. The bars not only provided clean computers with fast Internet connections spaced a few feet from each other, they also served drinks in food from behind a counter that looked like it belonged at Starbucks.
The Internet bars weren't expensive either, around two renminbi or less each hour.
But, each bar was also much more strict about who uses their computers than other bars I've visited. In order to use a computer, I had to wait a minute or two while they entered my name and passport number into a computer.
I've heard people say China can't control the Internet, a statement I very much disagree with. I'm not how sure entering my passport number into a computer fits into that plan, but, as part of the bigger plan, I think China controls the Internet very effectively.
Anyone can put anything up on the Internet they please. This website is a testament to that. But in order to communicate, other people have to be able to read what is on the Internet, preferably a lot of people.
Websites hosted outside of China that offer a point of view not consistent with the Party's point of view are easy enough to control with China's system of firewalls. Unfortunately, this also catches a lot of benign websites, too. Maybe that's why I couldn't look at my brother's website until I went to Hong Kong.
Websites hosted within China are apparently supposed to register with the government. I'm not sure what happens to them when they start propagating a message someone in a high place doesn't like.
These firewalls can be circumvented via proxy servers in foreign countries, but, a process that obtrusive means that the websites effectively aren't available in China.
Maybe someday I'll be able to read the Dalai Lama's blog from an Internet bar in Beijing.
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