"bokee is known for its tech-nationalism and unstable blog service, and is seen by many china observers as being "evil". if two sites do merge, will be interesting to see what happens - google becomes more like bokee or bokee more like google, or something inbetween."On a side note, the reason I'm so interested in U.S. Internet companies' involvement in China is because there is an open-mindedness on both the part of Chinese people and the companies to interact in ways Chinese might not with other major U.S. interests. Internet firms do not have negative cultural baggage that could put off Chinese, many of whom I've found to be extremely sensitive about how foreigners used to see China as a colonial target. The Internet itself is not about any ideology in particular, but merely a tool for spreading information and knowledge.
It's hard to argue against the Internet, which is one reason I believe the Chinese government has taken a wily and decentralized approach to censorship. Instead of imposing hard filters (although there are those as well), the Chinese government seems content with making information just hard enough to find that it never impacts society. There are exceptions, such as when a public official's wife (or daughter?) killed a vegetable vendor with her BMW several years ago. The government wasn't able to impose filters fast enough to stop the online firestorm. That was one instance where we had a glimpse of what the reaction would be like if the Chinese government imposed no control on content at all. As it is, however, many Chinese still believe Mao was on the whole good for China, despite his indirect murder of tens of millions of Chinese. Which makes me wonder ... how will the Chinese government ever open up real discussion while Mao Zedong's portrait still looms over Tiananmen Square and his body is enshrined in something akin to the Lincoln Memorial?
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China has always oppressed its people(s). It's really so engrained, I don't know how they could change. What I think is sad is how easy our western businesses and our gov't makes it. We could impose sanctions, we could make demands, we could refuse to do business. But, "the love of money is the root of all evil..."
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