They act like frightened little girls.

China will never be a respected world leader until they put the kibosh on this kind of nonsense.

But it really doesn't matter, at least not while the Chinese middle class grows with leaps and bounds. Cue historically inevitable democratic revolution in what? 10 years? 15 years?

Rotten, the only problem with that is that they're so much better off than they were even a few years ago that they're not going to rock the boat. It'll happen, though. It's just going to take a while.

@2 - Yeah, because an increase in a population's wealth always precedes an increase in democracy (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.) Capitalism ≠ Democracy.

And of course, it probably goes without saying that anyone with an Internet connection in PRoC already KNOWS Liu has won the Nobel, so the Chinese authorities' deleting of his name simply plays up how fearful they are.

It's like reverse-reverse psychology: "ZOMG! Liu won a Nobel! If people find out, they'll think THEY can criticize the Party as well! Quick! Erase him from the Interwebs! Once they see how all-powerful the Party is, that'll put the Fear of General Secretary Hu into them! Now, go away, I've got a meeting with a bunch of American Capitalists in 15 minutes!"

peacefire / circumventor / proxy

Even more classy: They're blocking text messages, including by sometimes deactivating people's phones altogether. I agree with people who think that the increased wealth will decrease people's likelihood of having a revolution. At least in the short-term, that's not going to happen. In the long-term, perhaps? As more and more Chinese citizens spend years being VPs of companies in Europe and North America, I can only imagine that Chinese companies will try to woo them to return as CEOs, CFOs and COOs. The great firewall will end up coming down for them, and it *might* slowly trickle down. I'm not that hopeful, though. It's easier for the rich & powerful just to live in Hong Kong and only ever visit the mainland.

The best thing I've read on China's great firewall, and their internet policy in general: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch…

It may seem childish to us, but this keeps Chinese citizens who don't want to know from knowing, and probably keeps the information away from a lot of people who only passively care.

baidu.cn (the official Chinese search engine?) returns results for Liu Xiaobo. Is it because I'm accessing it from the US?

As does yahoo.cn.

the firewalls run inside, not outside. They figure you're gullible enough not to use an internal server.

@4 I'm not sure if those nations are the best examples; SA is ruled by a leisure class that doesn't work. 80% of the work force is guest workers (CIA factbook). Same thing with the UAE. There is no middle class in these nations; instead you have the lords and the serfs.

I stand by my original statement.

A Chinese national who I work with was REALLY excited about this when I got to work this morning. According to him:

"He says things that most people in China believe, but are too afraid to say, I think this will be very good for China."

Granted, my coworker was born and raised in Beijing, so he may be the Chinese equivalent of a "east coast liberal", but he's to hoping he's right.

They have to know they're never going to win right? Even after scrubbing the internet clean for the next few weeks they'll never catch every single bit. And when that one bit gets copied again, it's game over, if it hasn't already happened. I can tell you though, this is probably why their economy is bursting at the seems. They're employing people to do senseless things that will never end. If America employed that many people doing things on the internet over and over and over again, we wouldn't be so unemployed. Of course, the next step is to find the people actually able to do these things on the internet. China has them, we know how to facespace.

My guess is most Chinese who have heard of him will find a reason to dislike Liu Xiaobo. Probably they are highly ambivalent, as in the case of Tiananmen. It's sad, but most "Western" criticism gets drowned out by Chinese chauvinism. At least it felt that way when I was there. But maybe it's changing now? Any sloggers in China?