Ryan Pyle Blog: Xinhua Bylines in Newsweek?

Hello,

We all need to be ready for it. This is my warning to us all. Large Chinese media conglomerates have their eyes set on storied western media brands, and they are cash rich and ethics poor. A few weeks back the Southern Media Group, based in Guangzhou, made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Newsweek.

My heart nearly stopped.

Newsweek are one of my clients, and they are in financial difficultly. There has been no secrete that the magazine is up for sale and there have been many suitors. I think the independent global media needs to be very fearful about Chinese media companies expanding abroad on the backs of western brands. The Chinese suitors bring with them a complete set of journalism ethics and morals than those of the west.

Evan Osnos, a wonderful writer and the New Yorkers man in China, sums it all up wonderful in his blog post below.


The New Yorker
Written by: Evan Osnos
Original LINK
__________________________________________
WHAT IF CHINA HAD BOUGHT NEWSWEEK?
Posted by Evan Osnos

The news that bidders for Newsweek included China’s Southern Media Group—a bid that was rejected—has left all sides a bit insulted. For Newsweek, the prospect of being bought by a company in the world’s No. 2 jailer of journalists (Iran is number one) appears to have been too grim to take seriously. For American journalists generally, the implication that our industry is edging toward a fire sale was not especially welcome. And, for the Chinese bidders, it sounds like they’ve been stung by the sense that they were not treated as legitimate prospects. As Xiang Xi, executive editor of Southern Weekly, part of the Southern Media Group, put it in an interview with an Anhui paper: “[T]he seller genuinely does not comprehend the desires of idealistic Chinese media workers and institutions.” (Translated by Global Voices.) Moreover, he said, “Even though the purchase of Newsweek failed, the search for investments will continue.” He encouraged “any media of global influence” that may be interested to drop him a line. He even provided his e-mail address: xiangxi100@hotmail.com.

The fact is that neither side truly understands the other in this case. The prospective buyers are not wrong that they have a right to bid on an American news organization, but they are wrong that they had the remotest shot of succeeding. For the moment, the spiritual gap between them and American news organizations is larger than even the most sober Chinese media baron probably imagines. A sale of this kind is, for the moment, beyond imagination.

But it’s also true that Xiang Xi is not being cynical when he says that most Americans don’t grasp the “desires of idealistic Chinese media workers.” Much of the discussion about the Newsweek bid has been about the Chinese government’s campaign to project “soft power” abroad, and that is relevant. But that is also losing sight of some nuances in the world of Chinese media. Like every newspaper in China, those in the Southern Media Group are owned by the state, and the party appoints the top editors. But the Southern Media Group is not the People’s Daily, and the differences are worth acknowledging.

The Southern Newspaper Group was an oasis of open-minded thinking in the state’s hidebound media empire, and it was known for pushing the limits within the propaganda apparatus. Its most daring publication, a paper based in Guangzhou named the Southern Weekend was winning readers and inspiring journalists across the country by showing how aggressive reporting and elegant writing could be possible despite censorship. On the Communist organization charts, the Group was part of the propaganda bureaucracy, but it also occupied a special place in the informal web of interest groups that made up the party. Ideologically, it was a camp for the party’s liberal wing. The editors of its newspapers were heirs to a tradition that began in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Movement, when their predecessors launched a paper that gave voice to opinions that differed from the party line. One of the founders … argued that even if political conditions made it impossible for journalists to always write the truth, they should at least refuse to publish lies. Generation after generation, the editors of the Southern Newspaper Group tried to live up to that standard.”

In 2003, one of the Southern Group’s editors, Cheng Yizhong, dared to publish an investigation into the death of Sun Zhigang, a young graphic designer who died in police custody after a beating—a report that led to the discovery and closure of a nationwide network of seven hundred underground police-run detention camps—an astonishing case of the Chinese press influencing national policy. But, as Pan wrote, Cheng was detained for doing it; he spent five months in a detention center and now works in a low-profile media job. His two colleagues were sentenced to long jail terms. Before he went to jail, he gave a speech to his staff that included this line: “Whatever happens, we must not give up the values and beliefs of the Southern Metropolis Daily. We have reason to be proud.”

It was a courageous sentiment from someone working in a profoundly imperfect system. I wouldn’t want to be owned by them either, and I don’t expect it will happen anytime soon. But, let’s not sneer too much. As colleagues in a business that is tough enough, Chinese journalists deserve our respect.
__________________________________________


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Google Gives Us Hope

Hello.

Ai Wei Wei is a man who isn't afraid to speak his mind. He was once praised by the Chinese central government, for helping design the famed Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium, and not long afterwards was being beat up in a hotel room in Chengdu by a bunch of thugs as he wanted to learn more about the collapsed schools during the Sichuan Earthquake.

For who ever thinks that Ai Wei Wei might be a careless activist, think again. He is very careful with his words and his articles/options are always very well written and very well thought out. Which is why I feel anytime he is published in the English language media it's important to read his words and debate his point of view; as is common in any open society where the freedom of speech and of ideas are protected.

Pay special attention to his last paragraph. It's a stunner.

Original Story LINK
Copywrite Wall Street Journal
___________________________________
Google Gives Us Hope
If China can remain powerful though it limits freedom of speech, what kind of monster will it become?
By AI WEIWEI

China may have become the second-biggest economy in the world, but its political system remains stuck in the early 20th century. Even as Chinese people's horizons are broadening, the government clings to a one-party ideology that is hostile to personal freedom. Technology is making possible greater expression and political participation, but that has only prompted the authorities to work harder to stifle these impulses.

All this makes Google's decision to stop censoring to protect its China operations especially significant. First, it is encouraging for the Chinese people to see that a leading Internet company recognizes that censorship is a violation of basic human rights and values. Such controls damage the core ethos underpinning the Internet.

To stand up and speak out in a society in which those values are under constant attack requires courage and deserves moral support. Politicians and enterprises should not trade those basic rights for profits, because any short-term deal will only lead to long-term losses.

In several cases the judicial system has used information from an accused person's email as evidence of attempting to overthrow the government. This is a clear case showing how an authoritarian state can use technology not to benefit social life and improve political participation, but rather to violate the privacy of individuals and control their thinking, communication and expression.

From last October, I found that two of my Gmail accounts were being hacked by unknown intruders, and my Gmail messages were being automatically transferred to an unknown address. Other activists have reported the same intrusions to their Gmail accounts.

Most discouraging to those of us who are fighting for increased freedom is the tendency for developed nations to lower the bar to please China. They make excuses not to concern themselves with violations of human rights. To espouse universal values and then blind oneself to China's active hostility to those values is irresponsible and naïve.

When American officials come to China with a pretty smile and the soft tone of a so-called "friendly gesture," this only tells us how fragile and vulnerable these moral standards can be. It makes the people still in the struggle feel disappointed.

In recent months China has tightened its censorship over every medium, from the Internet to the mainstream media to instant messaging over mobile phones. This is the mark of a government that has lost confidence in its own ideology and is nervous about its power to control its own people. Stopping the free exchange of information ultimately hampers economic growth and opportunity, which is the Chinese government's main claim to legitimacy. The question then is how a state based on limiting information flows and freedom of speech can remain powerful. And if it can, what kind of monster it will become.

Mr. Ai is a Beijing-based artist and activist.
___________________________________


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Corbis is Blocked in China

Hello.

This is not exactly breaking news but it appears that Corbis, the global photographic agency, is blocked in China. Now this is a little disturbing on several fronts. First of all Corbis manage my stock archive, and they have done so for about the last 6 years. And because of that I constantly view their website to see how my editor edits the stories I submit and how many images of mine are currently being managed by Corbis; at the moment it is hovering around 1200 images.

My archive and financial well being aside, it is interesting to note that Getty Images, Magnum, VII Photo and just about every other photography agency and collective is not blocked in China. So why Corbis? And whom did they piss off?

It's a confusing game trying to understand why some sites in China are blocked and other are not, but it's a bit concerning that the company that manages my archive is blocked in the world's most populous country, a place where magazine advertising is flourishing and one of the few places in the world that is bucking the downward spiral of the publishing industry.

I don't have much else to say on the issue. I just hope the situation is cleared up at some stage in the future. Maybe China is having a dispute with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who owns Corbis. Does anyone out there have any information to share?

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Accessing my Blog

Hello.

I've been in North America working for the last few weeks and I can't tell you what a dream it is not having to worry about internet filters and restrictions. Living in China, I often have to use a proxy to evade the firewall. This needs to be used on a daily basis to update my website and blog, and it can be an exhausting process as the proxies are never very stable.

Being in Toronto, and North America in general, I can't believe how bliss it is just being able to access my blog and various websites. It's quick and easy, and the funny thing is that Canadians, and American's, don't look corrupted by internet content. So is the benevolent filtering really helpful? Or is China just making the problem much bigger than it is so that they can save a few thousand "net nanny" jobs at the Propaganda Bureau?

Making jobs is important in this day and age, but the "net nanny" society that currently exists in China wreaks of the Cultural Revolution era when children ratted out their parents and neighbors for "capitalist behavior". I wish we could all just grow up a bit. Yes, there are lots of bad things on the internet; and there are lots of good things as well. Make it free, get parents to do there job and get the government to back off.

Some days it can be exhausting living in the day to day mess that is China. Luckily, I have my proxy. I just need to find a way to upload pictures to clients faster and I'll be well on my way to a fully functioning photographer; instead of one trapped behind a fire wall that makes updating his Facebook "status" a 30 minute painful ordeal.

I promise, that's the last bitch session about the internet in China.

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Censorship Blowback

Hello.

I try not to publish other people's work on my blog too often, striving more for original content; but the recent actions of the Chinese government towards companies like Google has livened up the debate about just what the hell is the government thinking.

I spoke with my friend the other day and we both agreed that in such an important year, the 60th Anniversary of founding of the People's Republic of China, the folks in Beijing are behaving a little odd. In fact, my friend and I concluded that Beijing was acting like a government in fear. In fear of what? Rampant corruption? An middle class that is more savvy and educated than the governing elite? It's hard to say exactly, but Beijing is afraid; and they are taking it out on the internet.

Below is a blog written by Rebecca MacKinnon. (Copywrite Rebecca MackInnon)

Rebecca's Blog: http://rconversation.blogs.com
_____________________________________________________________________________________
June 25, 2009
China's censorship blowback
By: Rebecca MacKinnon

I'm not sure what the Chinese government is thinking, or whether certain parts of certain ministries and party apparatus have gotten completely out of control.

Until recently, it had seemed to me that the Chinese government was managing its censorship system with surprising success: censoring enough (combined with strategic arrests) to keep people from using the Internet to organize a successful nation-wide political opposition movement; but at the same time allowing enough space for online discourse and citizen-muckraking that people have felt freer and more empowered than ever before, which actually seemed to work in favor of the central government's legitimacy - despite being very bad news for corrupt local officials. But this month, something shifted. It's unclear whether the shift is long-lasting or just temporary madness until the PRC's 60th anniversary on October 1st.

Most of China's educated, largely apolitical, internet-connected urbanites have until now been generally willing to accept the political status quo - and with it a certain amount of censorship, thuggishness and injustice, political paranoia and occasional bizarreness - in exchange for overall social stability (compared to any other time in living Chinese memory), economic growth, plus an impressive increase in China's global power and status. But whoever is driving the latest Internet crackdown and the accompanying moralistic propaganda drive may have done substantial damage to the government's credibility.

June began with the expected tightening of Internet censorship around the 20th anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, including the temporary blocking of Twitter and various other websites. That in itself was not a huge surprise. It followed the usual logic of Chinese Internet censorship: tighten up the bottleneck between the Chinese Internet and the outside Internet during politically sensitive periods. Chinese Internet users who tend to be concerned with politics know to expect this kind of thing. However a simultaneous suspension in service for "technical maintenance" on many domestic websites impacted a much larger number of Chinese Internet users who don't visit overseas-hosted news or social networking sites very much. It would likely not have occurred to many million Internet users that June 4th was a politically sensitive date if China's "net nanny" hadn't made it so blatantly obvious, prompting many teenagers who weren't even born in 1989 to ask each other and their parents what happened on June 4th. But that was June 4th. People expect a certain amount of government paranoia around that time.

Little did we know, that was just the beginning of The Month The Censors Stopped Taking Their Medication.

The next week the government's Green Dam censorware mandate became publicly known. Authorities insist on implementing the mandate despite the fact that it doesn't work as intended or advertised, is a security risk and has been subject to widespread domestic criticism (by bloggers as well as state-controlled media and respected public figures like Caijing editor Hu Shuli). Now the U.S. government warns it could be a violation of the WTO. It seems the government is having trouble finding a face-saving way to climb down. Rather than admit they made a mistake and work out a sensible solution with domestic and foreign industry, they have chosen instead to escalate in an increasingly irrational manner that serves only to increase Chinese Internet users' scorn and irritation.

Last week the propaganda department turned it sights on Google China, and continues to blame Google for smut on the Internet. Horror of horrors, when you type smutty words and phrases into the Google search box, you get smutty content coming back in your search results! Many people including this blogger (via Roland Soong) and this blogger have pointed out that plenty of smut remains available via Google's Chinese competitor Baidu. How commercially convenient for Baidu... though some bloggers point out that the whole fracas - aided by outrage and ridicule over a staged anti-Google interview on CCTV - is actually making Google more popular among netizens, who were already annoyed with the government for dispensing commercial favoritism on the makers of Green Dam.

So far this week we've seen the temporary blocking of Google.com and related services hosted outside of China including GMail. As if that wasn't bad enough for one week, we're now told that sexual health websites are a no-go for ordinary Internet users.

Meanwhile, the increased discussion of censorship all over the Chinese Internet is prompting China's netizens to educate themselves about the various technical methods to "jump over" the "great firewall." There are no hard and fast statistics on how many people in China are now using proxy servers, Tor, Psiphon, Freegate/Dynaweb, or OpenDNS as compared to a month ago. But based on the frequent mentions of these tools I've been seeing every day on blogs, in Twitter, and on other social networking sites, it seems that the latest Net Nanny follies have helped raise awareness of circumvention tools to a whole new level. If you plug the term 翻墙 (which means "scale the wall" - the most common Chinese euphemism for censorship circumvention) into Google's search insights and restrict it to searches coming from China, you see a big spike in early June and a bigger spkie in the past few days.

Searches for Tor (a nonprofit tool for anonymizing and circumvention) are also substantially up this month, and Chinese-language searches originating in China for Freegate (a tool developed and operated by a FLG-affiliated organization) spiked dramatically over the weekend.

Aggravation is certainly mounting. After finding Google.com and GMail blocked on Wednesday night Beijing time, Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs Danwei.org wrote a letter to China's "net nanny," in which he pointed out: "You are making Chinese people look like children on the world stage. You are bringing shame to the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese Communist Party."

To protest the mounting ridiculousness, Ai Weiwei is calling for an Internet boycott on July 1st. Others like lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan believe a boycott is not the best way to protest Internet restrictions. He writes (translated by Roland): "We have nothing against the Internet. We should not boycott the Internet. We should be using the Internet to promote democracy, rule of law, people's livelihood and progressiveness." Roland suggests some other kind of protest that is more measurable, as the success or failure of an Internet boycott is very hard to measure. Meanwhile a group of anonymous Chinese Netizens have issued an open letter, vowing to take collective action on July 1st. It's not clear exactly what they will do, other than to say: "we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are. We are going to mark you as the First Enemy of the Internet."

The following paragraph is particularly interesting. They claim they're not interested in overthrowing the government; but the government is bringing on its own punishment for behaving in such a stupid manner:

NOBODY wants to topple your regime. We take no interest whatsoever in your archaic view of state power and your stale ideological teachings. You do not understand how your grand narrative dissipated in the face of Internetization. You do not understand why appealing to statism and nationalism no longer works. You cannot break free from your own ignorance of the Internet. Your regime is not our enemy. We are not affiliated in any way with any country or organization, and we are not waging this war on any country or organization, not even on you. YOU are waging this war on yourself. YOU are digging your own grave through corruption and antagonization. We are not interested in you, destined for the sewage of history. You cannot stop the Internetization of the human race. In fact, we won't bat an eyelid even if you decide to sever the transpacific information cables in order to obtain the total control you wanted. The harder you try to roll back history, the more you strain the already taut strings, and the more destructive their final release. You are accelerating your own fall. The sun of tomorrow does not shine on those who are fearing tomorrow itself.

June has been pretty wild. I wonder what July has in store...


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Missing Pages (Economist)

Hello.

After spending several exhausting days in rural Tibet I managed to get home in one piece, albeit very sore from the nine days I spent combing through remote river valleys on foot.

Upon my return to Shanghai I was craving news, newspapers and news magazines. I love to know what's going on and I was mostly craving my Economist. I reckon I would have a backlog of two or three issues waiting for me at home and I was more than ready to put my feet up and dive right in.

To my astonishment my Economist magazines were not waiting for me at home. They had failed to show up. This often happens when sensitive China articles are published, but to be honest it hasn't happened in months and I was pretty pissed off by the fact that the post office just decides to put a hold on my magazines when ever it feels like it.

So in a huff I made my way to the grocery store, that I frequent, and managed to get a week old copy, the May 28th to June 4th version that has (in Asia) "Kim's Bombshell" on the cover. Feeling happy after my purchase I brought it home and pushed through the opening sections and devoured each article at a record pace (as you do after a long absence away from any form of reading/writing). I was so quick in fact that I read from Page 30 to Page 33 almost without noticing that Page 31/32 was missing. It had been torn out.

Now, it had been torn out very neatly and in a fashion that didn't disrupt the other articles. But the act itself lead to several questions: Like, how many people in China are employed to rip out magazine articles that are deemed sensitive? No wonder China Post is losing money hand over fist; so much so that DHL and FedEx have now been banned from operating domestically in China - a very protectionist move. Also, who decides what articles are deemed offensive or not? Is this why sometimes my other magazines don't show up? Who is this magazine editing actually targeting, foreigners or Chinese? If it is targeting foreigners, might the effort be seen as futile? If this behavior is directed at Chinese, I would be curious to know how many locals are reading the Economist that are not web savvy enough to know that the week of June 4th was the anniversary of Tiananmen. Is this the behavior of a global power? Is this the behavior of a regional power? Does the United States censor and rip out pages of Chinese language magazines and periodicals? Food for thought.

Now, the page in question "Banyan: The Party Goes On" deals specifically with Tiananmen and the party's survival skills, and it is copied below. Is this article really so piercing and critical that it requires the embarrassment involved in being torn out of the magazine by hand several thousand times? Me thinks not. I would expect behavior like this from Burma, but not China. It's a weak effort from a seemingly strong country. Imagine how the country will progress when we, locals and foreigners, begin being treated like adults; who can actually handle the truth. Could be a magical era, think of all the prison space that could be freed up.

Copywrite: The Economist
Banyan
The party goes on
May 28th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Who, 20 years ago, would have thought that the Communist Party could come to this?

WHEN the tanks departed Beijing after the crackdown of June 1989, no one with an interest in China thought the matter ended. The Chinese Communist Party had won its battle for survival, but the war seemed unwinnable. All the more so after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe later that year, followed by the Soviet Union. Even China’s lunge for breakneck growth from 1992 looked set to accelerate forces the party might not control. As the party’s ideological and moral foundations crumbled, it was no longer clear what on earth it stood for.

China-watchers’ scenarios ran from party collapse to a democratising path. As late as 1998 Bill Clinton was able to tell his Chinese host, President Jiang Zemin, that suppressing dissent put China “on the wrong side of history”. Banyan was in the audience that day, his Flying Pigeon (state-made bicycle) outside. Mr Clinton’s words seemed self-evident. But with hindsight, much of where the West said China was going was wishful thinking.

What nearly no one predicted has transpired. Today, the party is as strong at home as at any time since it seized power in 1949. Though still authoritarian, it rules largely by consent, preferring persuasion to violence and intimidation—though these remain handy, as during the crushing of Tibetan riots last year.

Abroad, its prestige is as high: some believe China’s economy is about to save the world. Mr Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, has been welcomed at the top table of world leaders. On her first trip to Beijing as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was as blunt as her husband had been a decade earlier, but with a different message: the United States would not let China’s human-rights abuses obstruct the history being made between these two great states.

It is a commonplace that the party’s legitimacy is built on economic growth. Yet China’s leaders have long considered that to be merely the (simplistic) half of it. After the massacre, the Communist Party set about transforming itself. It launched a vast historical investigation into how political parties fall, and how they stay in power. Everyone was scrutinised, from Saddam Hussein to Scandinavian social democrats. The conclusion: adapt or die.

The outcome is a wholesale reinvention of the party, a process accelerated after Mr Hu stepped up as paramount leader in 2004. Shortcomings that were identified included corruption (a chief complaint of the Tiananmen students), lack of accountability in decision-making, no convincing ideology, and an ossified structure. In a recent book (“China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation”), David Shambaugh describes how the 74m-strong party has fired whole armies of time-servers. Bright technocrats and entrepreneurs have been recruited. Retirement rules have been revamped (the Soviet Union’s gerontocracy was noted). Party members have gone back to school: three weeks a year and three months for every three years of mid-career training. More appointments are open to peer scrutiny before they are filled. The Communist Party is vastly more able to govern.

Some in the wishful West will see this as a proto-democratisation of a Leninist state. The opposite is the case. Staying in power is the party’s only credo now that revolution has been jettisoned. It is the sole reason for revamping the mechanisms of power.

China’s other manufacturing industry
A case in point is the Communists’ approach since 1989 to the crucial field of propaganda. With the end of Maoist mobilisation, the party turned to Western techniques of public relations and mass media, manufacturing consent by guiding public opinion in certain directions while barring it from others. In “Marketing Dictatorship”, Anne-Marie Brady sums up the party’s approach as emphasising achievements, not allowing bad news during holiday periods or around sensitive dates (including June 4th), and not raising problems that can’t be solved (unemployment, inequality). It talks up the economy, regularly demonises the United States and uses Orwellian newspeak to shape the debate about certain subjects (“party-state” is banned in public discourse in favour of “the political party in power”). It presents stories in ways that encourage people to take sides. It turns natural disasters into quasi-religious occasions of national solidarity. And always, always repeat after me: “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”

With this approach, the proliferation of channels for media, information and entertainment offers unbounded scope for the party to get its messages across, abetted by commercial operators. The internet has proven a particular boon, since its users are predominantly young, educated males from the cities—just the kind of groups, the party has noted, behind the colour revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Shaping the online debate while using controls and surveillance to block most of what it does not want surfers to see, the internet is an example of how the party has corralled mainland Chinese into what Ms Brady calls “a virtual mind prison”—though one with plenty of fun and games to keep people entertained. In 2000 Mr Clinton said that trying to control the internet in China was “like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall”. The Communist Party seems to have managed it.

This is little comfort to Westerners projecting their hopes for democratic change on to China. Nor is there any sign that Chinese intellectuals identify with the myriad grievances of their poor countrymen, as they did during the Tiananmen protests. And the growing middle class appears more fearful of the great unwashed than of the depredations of a party that once was at war with the bourgeoisie. So no national movement challenges the party’s monopoly. The state might yet prove unable to meet growing demands for health care and schooling. Leadership splits might threaten the party, as they did in 1989, with China now facing its biggest economic test since then. But for now, the Communist Party glides smoothly upon the tide of history.


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Faster Internet Access?

Hello,

It appears that all the time I've spent on this blog complaining about my slow internet access has finally reached the right people in the upper reaches of government, one blog can make a difference.

A news report from the Shanghai Daily, an English language newspaper, stated that by the end of 2009 residents of Shanghai (that's me + 20 million others) will get broadband speeds 50 to 100 times faster than rates we currently get.

The new speed rates, tipping over 100Mbps, which I guess is supposed to be fast. See Article Here

Big questions that weren't answered in the newspaper article, surprise surprise, is censorship and the firewall. Currently the big reason for slow internet connections for anyone viewing websites, that originate outside of China, is because of the firewall. Until that issue gets dealt with they can increase the speeds as much as they want, they can spend billions laying new fiber and upgrading infrastructure, but to what end if all we can do is access websites based in China (ie. 98% Chinese content)

Beyond the fire wall, personally I don't care if it's 50Mbps or 100Mbps or 1000Mbps, as long as I can upload pictures to my archive and to clients fast.......I mean fast fast. Oh, and watching Youtube or Hulu every now and then to catch up on some good old American culture would be nice as well.

Fire wall or no fire wall, I say bring it! It couldn't be any worse than the current speeds.

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________