Just because it calls itself the Communist Party doesn't mean it is.

China has, to some extent, free enterprise and a market economy, the government is not administrating all of the people's resources, therefore it is not Communist.

Even if it's Communist Party is truly perfectly Communist, and all of it's members worship Marx, then the country is not Communist because of it's policies and the way it's economy is administrated.

China can say what it wants to, the world can call it what it wants to, but the fact is that Communism is a defined word. A defined way of running a country, or at least a section of it's policies, if a country or organization does not conform to that, it is not Communist.

SpiritWarrior: Generally anything related to Democracy, free speech, etc. is blocked, to prevent people getting dangerous ideas. "Useful" knowledge is not blocked, in fact I think China would generally not prevent any sort of technical knowledge from being passed on(Unless we're talking stuff like the Anarchist's Cookbook.).

Phew...what a relief.....so no matter what the ruling party in China says, we can all completely ignore that, because Neb says it isn't so. :D Thank you Neb, because of you i sleep much easier. You wouldn't happen to have any political ambitions, would you ? I'd follow you blindly, cult of the unseeing eye style.

<font color=skyblue>What I meant by something useful was the right to voice and have access to voices of opinion, something we of the free world might take for granted these days because it is hard to imagine a world where we could be told what we were and were not allowed to read or say.

I had read about this censorship years ago, and have forgotten the source that my memory was conjuring, but to be fair, I did some googling to find out if what I remembered was accurate. </font>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People's_Republic_of_Ch ina
<font color=skyblue>
If Wiki is not a good enough reference page, I am sure the Harvard Law School's website will be. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/

That link contains a list of some sites that are blocked and reasons as to why.</font>

[ 03-22-2007, 09:50 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

The CCP censors the internet simply because they don't want Chinese citizens having access to information that does not conform to State ideology. I went on a guided tour of Beijing last October. My tourguide said he'd never seen 'that photo' (of the protestor standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square) until 2005, and then he only saw it because an American tourist he'd guided emailed it to him from the States.

Apparently, and this is purely hearsay from the tourguide's mouth, most Beijingites know something happened at Tiananmen Square, but have no way of finding out exactly what.

<font color=8fbc8f>You know Johnny, I had that exact same thought! [img]graemlins/cheers.gif[/img] </font>

<font color=skyblue>
The section of your sentence, "I think" demonstrates that your opinion has not been founded on fact.

A sampling of sites that are blocked:</font>
</font>

• MIT Computer Architecture Group Home Page</font>
• The Cancer Information Network</font>
• imss.caltech.edu(information management systems and services)</font>
• The China Times</font>
• columbia.edu</font>
• Study Tour to JAPAN 97</font>
• Environmental Protection Agency - Taiwan</font>
• Canada Family Action Coalition - CFAC</font>
• Fair Trade Commission - Taiwan</font>
• Government Information Office, Republic of China</font>
• Irish Chronicle: news from Ireland and around the world</font>
• Welcome to the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science</font>
• The Learning Channel</font>
• MIT Libraries</font>
• Radio Canada International</font>
• Supercomputer Computations Research Institute</font>
• Space Science Division, NASA</font>

[ 03-22-2007, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

[img]graemlins/cheers.gif[/img]

http://english.people.com.cn/zhuanti/Zhuanti_485.html
<font color=skyblue>
Here is a link to a list of news items with the headings of:

* Latest News
* Governance Philosophy
* Party Building
* The Communist Party of China in Brief

Whatever China is doing, they are trying to make something that they consider a communist party stronger by recruiting new members in the schools and punishing people who are not following the "disiplines", as these reports indicate.</font>

Actually, Communism = [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] . It's only humans with Communism that = :(

Rather, humans disguising a dictatorship as Communism = :(