Wait, even Blogspot is Blocked in China?!

OK, I finally got to Shanghai after about two and a half days spent in
airports and planes...and probably most annoying aspect of being here,
besides the insanely hot weather (95 degrees and 95% humidity) is
probably the fact that most sites Americans tend to access (a lot of
news sites, Facebook, Youtube, blog sites including Blogspot...yes, I
can only post via email now) are completely gone here...while, of
course this is not news, but the sites and softwares that allow for
proxy access to bypass the so-called Great Firewall of China have
themselves been banned, showing the increased sophistication of
Internet monitoring in this country.

Now, we all know certain sites are blocked for political reasons (news
sites and blog sites with their "anti-Chinese" writings) and others
for economic protections (Facebook and Youtube blocked so their
Chinese counterparts can practically have monopolies of their domestic
markets), but considering that both the Chinese netizens and the CCP
understand that neither the political reasons (you can't really block
all anti-Chinese commentaries on all Western sites...and a lot of
those comments get onto approved Chinese blogs and other sites) nor
the economic reasons (Chinese people at home and abroad tend to use
Chinese SNS and other sites over English ones anyways...even without
blocking the corresponding non-Chinese ones) really justifies the
censorship, is there some other story going on underneath?

Let's say that the 400 million Chinese netizens of today are really
quite an international bunch. Sure, they are somewhat brainwashed with
excessively nationalistic (and by that, I mean pro-PRC...modern
Chinese somehow can't distinguish between China as a nation and PRC as
a political entity...its quite sad), but they know exactly whats going
on around the world. They have understandings of foreign cultures and
people hundreds of times greater than their parents and grandparents.
...and most of all, they are highly cynical about the socio-political
problems of modern China and they know many countries are better than
CHina in many other ways...

Yet, somehow, these netizens, in real life the white collar
professionals and college students who represent the current and
future backbones of the Chinese economy and political support for the
CCP, are not a bit seems willing to go out of the way to do anything
remotely close to what their counterparts did back in 1989....

That lack of visible agitation today compared to 1989 (none of
socio-political problems have been solved in the 21 years since that
event...and probably all the problems that were topics of protest got
much worse today...) is largely thanks to the change in methodology
and focus in censorship...and partial blockage of the Internet has
been very much an important part of the change.

To put the change in very simple words, it could be said that it is a
transformation from "creating your (CCP's) own version of truth" to
"guiding the people to the CCP's viewpoint through limited access to
the real truth."

To be specific, by allowing people to see the CCP version and the
"foreign" version of the same story side by side, the CCP is greatly
adding to its own credibility as (somewhat) transparent. Especially
in the case when the two stories differ somewhat, the CCP gives the
netizens an image in which it admits its own problems (by showing that
it still somewhat does censor and distort the truth) but at the same
time makes effort to right the wrongs of being an overbearing,
domineering control-freak that it was in the not so distant past.

So, in short, it is a "confidence-building exercise" the CCP is
undertaking with regard to its relations with the so-often skeptical
netizen community. By earning their trust, the CCP is getting the
netizens to have more confidence in the CCP and PRC in its political
and economic policies...and increasingly, in the case the CCP differs
from the foreigners in certain sotries and opinions, get the Chinese
netizens to follow the CCP version as the "truthful" (well, this would
be a long shot but as a new younger group of netizens come into being
under this new censorship policy of the CCP, increasingly possible).

Time is on the side of the CCP. As the Chinese influence grows in the
world, the foreign media is increasingly more likely to be hostile
against China (they have to tap the increased fear and ignorance of
the average guy outside of China...who is unlikely and unwilling to
know anything about China except it is "communist," "taking over the
world," and *insert racial slur here*)...thus, the CCP stories and
foreign stories are likely to diverge more and more with the foreign
stories sounding more and more like attacks on the being of the
Chinese state and people rather than justifiable criticisms of PRC's
certain actions. This situation will lead the Chinese netizens to
realize that the stories from CCP-sponsored media, while distorted,
are still more truthful than the foreign ones.

This, combined with the increasing willingness of the CCP media to
report on negative news from China (even the ones directly related to
the CCP) due to its increased confidence in being able to solve the
said problems, will increasingly lead the Chinese netizens away from
the foreign media and genuinely toward the domestic CCP-controlled
media.

With such a trend, the day will come that transformation within the
netizen community happens so much (combined with increased economic
developments of China that makes foreign perceived wealth unenviable
within the relatively wealthy netizens) as to make censorship
completely unnecessary. And when the CCP lifts all censorship of
"anti-China" sites that day, none of the Chinese netizens will believe
a word those websites are stating....when that day arrives, the
influence of the foreigners in China will hit a possibly
non-reversible low.