Is Nicholas Kristof an idiot? the "******* vs. Netizens" case

Nicholas Kristof, op-ed columnist of New York Times, publishes an article today describing how he tests the limits of the Internet in China.

He started several blogs in Chinese internet service provider, and find that however political sensitive words he includes in the blogs are not deleted, but are just replaced by ******. He thus claims it to be a victory of Netizens, that Internet police are not able to control numerous blogs mushrooming in China.

Yes, Nicholas, you are very smart that you find this loophole in the system.

But everyone knows it too, just no one else is stupid enough to disclose it publicly.

Everyone, except you, understands that the loophole will be closed once it is disclosed publicly.

Provision of  Internet service, including hosting of blogs, is a very competitive business in China. In order to attract users, most providers will always “walk on the edge of the law” and try to create as little inconvenience to users as possible.

This includes, not removing “sensitive words” as the state censors require; instead, they simply replace the words with ******.  Technically, by doing this, Internet service providers violate the law, but the Internet police don’t bother to interrupt. I guess there is implicit agreement between them: Internet police want a quite life; Internet service providers want profit; Thus, police will leave service providers alone unless big troubles are made that humiliate the Internet police.

As a by product, Chinese netizens get a little bit more freedom than the law provides.

This will be soon gone, after Nicholas Kristof’s stupid move; typically the state will feel very embarrassed and feel publicly humiliated (in New York Times!), and then the Internet police will be reprimanded. And boy, who are the ultimate victims? The netizens!!

I still don’t understand why Nicholas Kristof publicizes this. To raise awareness? I guess everyone already knows that Chinese government censors Internet, and what Nicholas is telling us is no big news. Even when you want to raise awareness, there are many better ways that are much better than publicizing a loophole that has been benefiting Chinese netizens!

Certainly, you will say that the ultimate blame should be the government, and Kristof is only the little boy who tells everyone the Emperor has no clothes.

But why do we care whether the Emperor dresses or not!

See Kristof's op-ed article: "In China it's ******** vs. Netizens"
(Sorry I copy this NYT article without permissoin, but considering the great harm he's done to one hundred million Chinese netizens, I think Nicholas should allow me to violate his copyright for several days as a compensation)

Update: So far the two "test blogs" are yet to be closed down.

Below is Kristof's article in New York Times

In China it's ******* vs. Netizens
Nicholas Kristof

To test the limits of the Internet in China, I started a couple of Chinese blogs — in which I huff and puff as outrageously as I can.
For a country that employs some 30,000 Internet censors, that turned out to be stunningly easy. In about 10 minutes, I started Ji Sidao's blog — that's my Chinese name — on two Chinese Web hosts, at no cost and without providing any identification.
Writing in Chinese, I began by denouncing the imprisonment of my Times colleague, Zhao Yan, by the Chinese authorities. I waited for it to be censored. Instead, it promptly appeared on my blog.
In frustration, I wrote something even more provocative: a call for President Hu Jintao to set an example in the fight against corruption by publicly disclosing his financial assets. To my astonishment, that wasn't censored either.
Desperate, I mentioned Falun Gong, the religious group that is the Chinese government's greatest enemy: "In Taiwan, the Chinese people have religious freedom. So in the Chinese mainland, why can't we discuss Falun Gong?" That instantly appeared on both my blogs as well, although on one the characters for "Falun" were replaced by asterisks (functioning as pasties, leaving it obvious what was covered up).
Finally, I wrote the most inflammatory comment I could think of, describing how on June 4, 1989, I saw the Chinese Army fire on Tiananmen Square protesters. The two characters for June 4 were replaced by asterisks, but the description of the massacre remained intact.
These various counterrevolutionary comments, all in Chinese, are still sitting there in Chinese cyberspace at http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1238333873 and http://jisidao.blog.sohu.com. (When State Security reads this, it may finally order my blogs closed.)
All this underscores, I think, that China is not the police state that its leaders sometimes would like it to be; the Communist Party's monopoly on information is crumbling, and its monopoly on power will follow. The Internet is chipping away relentlessly at the Party, for even 30,000 censors can't keep up with 120 million Chinese Netizens. With the Internet, China is developing for the first time in 4,000 years of history a powerful independent institution that offers checks and balances on the emperors.
It's not that President Hu Jintao grants these freedoms, for he has arrested dozens of cyberdissidents as well as journalists. But the Internet is just too big and complex for State Security to control, and so the Web is beginning to assume the watchdog role filled by the news media in freer countries.
A year ago, I wrote about a blogger named Li Xinde who travels around China with his laptop, reporting on corruption and human-rights abuses. I hailed Mr. Li as an example of the emerging civil society in China — and the government promptly closed down his Web site. I wondered if I had overstated the challenge.
But today Mr. Li is as active as ever. His Web sites are constantly closed down, but the moment a site is censored he replaces it with a new one. An overseas master site, www.lixinde.com, tells people the best current address.
"They can keep closing sites, but they never catch up," Mr. Li told me. "You can't stop the Yellow River from flowing, and you can't block the bloggers."
In today's China, young people use proxy software to reach forbidden sites and Skype to make phone calls without being tapped — and the local Web pornography is relentless and explicit, ranging from sex videos to nude online chats.
"We're very relaxed now on pornography, but on politics it's very tight," said Yao Bo, a censor at a major chat-room site in China. He explained how the censorship works for a chat room:
Filtering software automatically screens the several hundred thousand comments typically posted on his Web site every day. Comments with a banned word go into a special queue, but Mr. Yao says he ends up posting all but the most subversive of these — his Web site, after all, wants to be provocative to attract visitors. State Security periodically scolds him for his laxity, but he seems unconcerned: "I just tell them I'm dumb about politics."
China's leaders decided years ago to accept technologies even if they are capable of subversive uses: photocopiers and fax machines at first, and now laptops and text messaging. The upshot is that China is much freer than its rulers would like.
To me, this trend looks unstoppable. I don't see how the Communist Party dictatorship can long survive the Internet, at a time when a single blog can start a prairie fire.