Over at the China Daily forum, I've given the Chinese Ministry of Information the backhanded slap it deserves for reining in domestic Chinese bloggers. I think it's terrible that Chinese have been deprived of a very useful medium for political speech. Democracy works best when people are informed and can freely debate issues. China says it is on the path to democracy, but by taking away blogs, I think the government is ensuring any future Chinese democracy is going to be a long time coming. After all, only relatively well-to-do and literate Chinese people publish or read blogs. These are the people that are crucial to bringing about mature democracy in their country.
(Interesting reading on this topic includes Nicholas Kristof's "Death by a thousand blogs" essay and my friend Dan's blog post regarding the issue. Dan lives in Hangzhou. China Daily, the official Chinese government English-language news source, also published a pretty good article about Chinese blogs on June 6, the same day news outlets worldwide were running headlines like "Chinese authorities declare war on blogs." Notably, the China Daily article references MSN Spaces, which is accessible from China, but not Blogger, which is unaccessible except through proxy.)
Are you outraged yet? Ha ... here's the clincher: the U.S. Federal Elections Commission is proposing campaign finance restrictions for blogs with political content. The official Blogger blog, buzz.blogspot.com, says the rules would affect bloggers in three ways: mandatory disclaimers, registration as a political committee for team blogs, and filing of campaign expenditure reports. But you don't see major headlines like "U.S. authorities declare war on blogs," do you?
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