Pre-think: Blogging in China

Pre-think: think before you speak. The self-censorship that is pre-think is still necessary in China: "Before posting anything on a blog, he says, "people think first if it's dangerous." He is a Chinese technologist, quoted in Dan Gillmore's Mercury News column. Gillmore recently visited the land of The Great Firewall that "blocks so much useful and thought-provoking information from the people."

European journalist and blogger Fons Tuinstra writes on his own blog that "That much is not blocked, even the Mercury News that was blocked in the past, and circumventing them is dead easy." He refers to a fairly new proxy service that makes the Firewall far less effective.

Tuinstra also notes, this time in Gillmore's column again:

"that blogging software is just a tool, not a road to political or social paradise. The government's shutdown of blogging sites was "a sign of panic'' over a new kind of medium, Tuinstra says. The panic subsided, but few Internet sites are pushing any speech boundaries at this point, by most accounts. Several sites are said to be discussing China's endemic corruption problems; that's a step in the right direction."