Banned in China

There's been news circling around the blogoshere about a brand new site called "Great Fire Wall of China". The site has been set up to show the embarrassing levels of censorship there really is in China. On it, you can test your site or blog's URL and see if you've been banned in China. Luckily for me, I'm still available to the Chinese public for viewership, (but it's quite probably a matter of time until I'm not) and some Chinese already have. Pacific Empire and Darnton Vs Clark have already been banned. No doubt, more blogs will be banned in the future.

The Chinese Government needs to realise that it's censorship is not doing it, or the country's, reputation any good. After all, most bloggers in New Zealand have nothing against the Chinese. Many are very well educated and China's recent sucesses in the economical sector, due to the liberalization of the economy, have been no short of brilliant. But it's time to bring China into the 21st Century permanently. Giving Chinese citizens more civil liberties and political freedoms-far more than what the Chinese currently have-will ultimately make them better citizens. And the first step in that process is removing censorship of all foreign blogs. China may have liberalized it's economy well, but in terms of civil liberties and political freedoms, is still very much a Communist country.

Something to think about for the next Chinese censor who comes on here.