Mar 062008
James Fallows at atlantic.com makes an interesting point about internet censorship in China, in an article titled The Connection has been Reset.
“The presence of censorship, even if easy to evade, promotes self-censorship.” The point is that a regime doesn’t have to assert a 100-percent effective prohibition in order to accomplish its object. A moderate amount of government censorship will cause people to censor themselves in order to avoid trouble.
And he concludes: “How long can the regime control what people are allowed to know, without the people caring enough to object? On current evidence, for quite a while.”