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Censorship China Government The Internet

Arrested Chinese Blogger "Confesses" On State TV, Praises Censorship 349

Koreantoast writes "As part of a broader, chilling Chinese crackdown on Internet dissent, Chinese blogger Charles Xue appeared on Chinese state television in handcuffs on Sunday, denouncing his blog and praising government censorship. He 'confessed' to becoming drunk on the accumulated power of his Weibo blog, which peaked at 12 million followers, and confessed to recklessly spreading unverified rumors and slander, disrupting social harmony and becoming a vent of negative emotion on mainstream society. He also praised new government legislation cracking down on Internet freedom, stating how dangerous the Internet would be if left uncontrolled by the government. Xue was arrested on prostitution solicitation charges though his television confession did not discuss that. His arrest was also suspiciously around the same time as a broader government sweep that picked up other Chinese Internet activists."
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Arrested Chinese Blogger "Confesses" On State TV, Praises Censorship

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  • by DNAgent ( 31914 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:08PM (#44878361)

    This is exactly the outcome that Diane Feinstein and others of her ilk would visit upon the U.S., given her way.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is exactly the outcome that Diane Feinstein and others of her ilk would visit upon the U.S., given her way.

      This is what conservatives actually believe.

    • by Qzukk ( 229616 )

      The Republicans would consider them to be acceptable casualties and collateral damage. And then it will be dailykos's turn.

    • by PRMan ( 959735 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @07:03PM (#44878857)
      Yeah, can the "I always vote Democrat" idiots in California finally vote her out please? I'm sick of being represented by her. But since they elected Jerry Brown to bankrupt California for a third time, probably not.
    • FOX news will make that list unless the GOP get's in power and then the other news channels may go down.

    • by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2013 @12:10AM (#44880761)

      This is exactly the outcome that Diane Feinstein and others of her ilk would visit upon the U.S., given her way.

      Excuse me, but what exactly makes you so confident that it isn't already this way? You can't blame "Diane Feinstein" or [insert another name here] for this. The situation would simply breed another person to take their place. Blame Obama! Blame Bush! Blame Canada!

      Please. Every government in the world wants things to be sunshine and kittens. It's the basis for all propaganda. We got revisionist history rewriting our high school text books every year. We got angry white fat dudes in suits on Fox News screaming at us about how avoiding war in Syria is somehow a bad thing... because Russia offered a peaceful solution and Syria took them up on it. I mean, how twisted is it that the party that made it's main agenda "making Obama a one term president" is backing him now because he's all like Let's Bomb ALL TEH THINGZ!

      With media distortion and control like that patently obvious to anyone who puts on their critical thinking cap, why are we thinking that we're somehow different than the Chinese in this regard? They got propaganda. We got propaganda. And?

      Anyone who says they're "pro-" whatever is admitting they've been suckered by pro-paganda. About the only place you don't hear "I'm pro-this-thing" is in science, where people regularly say "Well, the new evidence says I'm wrong. SWEET! To the lab!" ... They don't care for being pro-anything except passion for the work. Learn from them.

  • Tent camp! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:09PM (#44878365)

    The leaders of the so called free world promptly laid their coats over their laps after reading that little tidbit. I'm sure they were also wondering "How long till we can do that here?"

    Just to be fair, I'm sure Merkel and Hillary had to cover their laps as well for similar "problems".

    • Like you, I imagine representatives of the lawmaking class viewing freedom for the masses as a dark thorn in the side of their mission to protect us. Still, I hold out hope proponents of a great and free society have infiltrated the ranks of the rule makers to work clandestinely on the other side.
  • He also said that the prompter was holding up five fingers.

    I will never understand why they coerce these false confessions. There can't be more than a handful of people, especially in China where trust in their government is even lower than over here, who believes he changed his mind on his own.

    • Funny thing happens when everyone is dependant on their government for every facet of thier lives.

      Never need your government more than your government needs you.

    • Its affirmation that if you *will* conform, or else.

    • The population of the US actually pretty broadly trusts their government.

      Here is a box of tissues.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      China had huge issues in the 1940-70's massive starvation, huge political death toll, production issues and internal political issues with trying to get Communism to work just right.
      The people that are left recall what happened to millions and millions and passed on that fear to their child.
      The 1950~60's is not a distant memory for China.
      A confession makes the system work and the person might just save their extended family from the same fate.
  • Bradley Manning (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jherek Carnelian ( 831679 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:11PM (#44878395)

    And yet when Bradley Manning makes an eerily similar statement plenty of people are willing to take it as proof positive that he was a bad guy.

    • Re:Bradley Manning (Score:5, Interesting)

      by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:20PM (#44878511)

      And yet when Bradley Manning makes an eerily similar statement plenty of people are willing to take it as proof positive that he was a bad guy.

      The definition of patriotism is believing your country is the best country on Earth simply because you were born in it. Nobody's national anthem starts with "We're Number Two!" So when America says someone's bad, americans believe it, but nobody else does. When the Chinese say someone's bad, the chinese people believe it, but nobody else. And so on, and so on.

      Nationalism is hardly a problem confined to America; It blinds people equally the world over. Here's some Russian [utdallas.edu] propaganda about American, and here's some American [designer-daily.com] propaganda about Russians. It's all the same.

      • Patriotism is rooted in tribalism, and at various and sundry periods in time it was a survival mechanism for a random selection of genetic information. Whether or not this feature is presently vestigial, it remains religion-like as a proven tool to govern and/or control populations.
      • by dk20 ( 914954 )
        If i could mod you up i would... I've always thought this way, but its funny when you talk to some people. They are fast to tell you something like "that's just propaganda from ..." but they seem to feel their own country doesn't have an active propaganda program.
      • Exactly. Don't worry though, the rest of the world is watching.

    • Charles Xue did not steal, Bradley Manning did. Would anybody have cared if Bradley Manning had blogged what he felt instead of what he discovered? As for China, "human rights" are just 2 words in an engrish test.
    • by poity ( 465672 )

      Average Twitter celebrity = Charles Xue
      Bradley/Chelsea Manning = ???Chinese military whistle blower???

      Average Twitter celebrity: still tweeting; Charles Xue: arrested, made to confess on TV
      Bradley/Chelsea Manning: 35 years in jail; ???Chinese military whistle blower???: the world will never know this man or his fate

  • Oblig Orwell (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bookworm09 ( 1321243 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:13PM (#44878427)
    He loved Big Brother.
    • by dmt0 ( 1295725 )
      He also admitted that entering the new phase in his life he wants to be a woman and receive hormonal treatment.
  • "...I wrote and diseminated subversive literature, I lay with prostitutes in order to spread disease, I blew up bridges and commited anarchistic acts, spread terror upon innocents, I now only ask that you accept my love of Big Brother."
  • here [youtube.com]
  • by ClassicASP ( 1791116 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:15PM (#44878449)
    i gotta think people in china are intelligent enough to know this is a forced confession. and china's govt has to know their population is intelligent enough to know this. they're just basically making example of this guy as a message to its population to say "we can make you do whatever we want". i bet they threated to lobotomize the guy or something like that.
  • Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:18PM (#44878489) Homepage

    They threatened me and my family, and the only way I can escape prison or a firing squad is to publicly denounce this.

    I do not believe this is anything other than agreeing to repeat the party line under duress.

  • Or since this is China, he'll be the most famous member of the "Bodies" exhibit in a year.

    That's the only reason why he'd be pushed to renounce his beliefs and practices, because the guvmint wanted others like him to curl up and give up so they're making an example of him. And for the record, the Internet that he says is best controlled by the government is controlled by the government, it's behind the Great Firewall and required him to find a way around it to be heard.

  • by X X ( 3112619 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:27PM (#44878565)
    O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother”
  • by MetalliQaZ ( 539913 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:41PM (#44878663)

    No one seems to care

  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:47PM (#44878709) Journal
    ..he was black-bag arrested, subjected to torture, beaten, starved, thrown in an oubliette for a time, threatened with death, had his friends and family threatened with all the above, and likely drugged, until he finally broke and was willing to say anything they wanted him to say, no matter the cost to him or his reputation, and no matter how humiliating. Next he'll probably "commit suicide", leaving behind a note explaining how he couldn't live with the guilt and shame for having spoken such lies about the glorious and just Communist government of China.

    Yeah, sure. Sounds like just another normal day in mainland China.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, you can tell how tortured, beaten, starved, and drugged he was during his broadcasted confession in this video:
      http://v.163.com/zixun/V8GAM7JAP/V97SHLBI4.html

    • by m00sh ( 2538182 )

      LOL. Didn't they make people who were caught file-sharing write similar "anti-piracy" confessions for reduced charges?

      Anyways, we criticize countries for not having freedom of press. But, on the other hand, when countries do have freedom of press, we exploit that by planing stories to produce a favorable climate (e.g. the Iran CIA coup started with planted stories in the press).

      We have the largest prison population in the world and we have made incarceration and jails into a intricate behemoth of a syst

    • well, odds are they didn't have to do have of the extreme measures you suggest. Maybe this guy was exceptional, but all it usually takes is a good dose of cold water. A normal arrest and careful explanation of the consequences will get most people with family to fold. Of course, in the event they get a true idealist, then, yes, some or all of those measures will get the desired result.

      Torture may not be that great for getting truthful information, but it works wonders to get someone to say something, anythi

  • by FuzzNugget ( 2840687 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @07:45PM (#44879237)
    This is what fascist governments (and their lapdogs) do, be they Chinese, American or Swedish. They doctor up charges of a very stigmatized crime when you publish information that you don't like, turning the public against them because, "ew, he's a perv, who cares what he thinks?"
  • In 1984, Winston talks about public confessions exactly like this one...
  • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2013 @10:32AM (#44883619)

    "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

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