To Fred Bauder:
There have been instances where Chinese troops have been undisciplined. All it proves is that people who have been desperately poor all their lives were tempted by wristwatches and ballpoint pens.
Do you know what you said is things about 20 years ago when I’m only a child? Do you know China have the most cell-phone users in the world now? Do you know China have ten million broadband Internet users, just after USA, Japan and Korea, and will surpass Korea soon? Yes, we are a developing country, but we are developing fast.
I have to say that the mailing list now is full of bias on China.
About Tibet problem, I provide some history issue to reflect the common opinion in China. Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama must be approved their identity by the central government since Qing dynasty hundreds years ago. Just in 1910s when China was very weak, there was a movment to divided Tibet from China. Great British took some part in the issue, And we dislike the colonialism role of Great British.
yuanml wrote:
Do you know China have ten million broadband Internet users,
What we do know is that their access to www.wikipedia.org is depending on the day-to-day will of the government and/or bureaucracy. This is not the way we intended the Internet to work. This blocking is similar to a technical error and we should look for ways to repair it.
There used to be a similar problem in the Soviet Union, but it was "repaired" 15 years ago. First, East Europeans joined BBSes and electronic mailing lists, then the Berlin Wall came down, then the Soviet Union collapsed. Today, all former Soviet republics (perhaps with the exception of Belarus?) have unregulated access to the Internet. There was no "bias" or bad will in achieving this.
Internet connectivity is even more of a problem in Cuba than in the People's Republic of China. Are there any resident Cuban Wikipedia contributors at all? Not to speak about North Korea.
Look see, I don't have to go into political ideology here. All I need to promote is everybody's right and freedom to access the Internet. This is not the opium war of the 19th century. You might get addicted to the Internet, but it is not brought to you in order to enslave you. (Unless Wikipedia is considered to be slave labour...?)
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org