Comparing Access in Russia and China to Social Media and Blogsites

Before Facebook came along and provincialized and insulated social media, the blogosphere was a worldwide, developing phenomenon that promised to bring millions of people of diverse backgrounds, countries, and perspectives together.  I set up my own personal blog in 2007, using the Google Blogger free blogging site...and I have been regularly writing articles ever since, totaling now over 4,100 (and you can read every one of them if you wish).  Before Facebook I had a more cosmopolitan reading audience but ever since that site took over the world's social media the formerly-explosive development of personal blogging receded in favor of this convenient, albeit much more insulated and restrictive, form of Internet communication.  I finally saw the writing on the wall in early 2013 and began to post links on my Facebook page to my daily blog articles while still hoping that international readers...or others at-large from the good old U.S.A....would hit upon it as well, not just my Facebook friends and family.  Then I realized that other countries, to varying degrees and for different reasons, were blocking access to social media and blogging sites...the biggest reason I imagined being to stem the flow of any dissident material against their respective regimes.  Since Russia and China are often mentioned in the same sentence as being nations highly restrictive of the free flow of communications, I thought I'd compare how they deal with the most popular Western social media and blogging sites...

Right up front, pure and simple, China totally blocks Google, YouTube, GoogleMaps, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok (although it is a Chinese company's product), Twitter, and Wikipedia.  WordPress.com-hosted blogs are also blocked there, but WordPress.org-generated blogs are not.  LinkedIn technically isn't blocked, but the Chinese version reportedly carries greater restrictions.  In Russia, among the above sites only LinkedIn is blocked, and that is reportedly because it violates a Russian law prohibiting individual Russians' user information being stored outside the country.  And some Wikipedia articles have been blacklisted in Russia.  Yet I have read ongoing Twitter live on-the-spot reports by a Russian journalist during recent Moscow protests...no problem picking it up along with commentary and video.  And he would agree with me that although Russia isn't as free and open a society as America with our dearly-held First Amendment, it is still a much freer place for its people regarding the Internet than is mainland China.  Russian folks can read my blog...Chinese cannot, and that about expresses it as far as I'm concerned.  Now it's true that the Russian authorities over the years have placed restrictions on certain matters of content...particularly with YouTube...but bloggers and social media users still really do have a good amount of freedom between the U.S. and Russia.  China? Forget it...

Just Finished Reading An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power by Al Gore

Back in 2006 Al Gore released his film/book combo titled An Inconvenient Truth, which presented the basics about the climate change crisis facing the world.  Eleven years later the former American vice-president has authored An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power using the same film/book formats.  I just finished reading it and have my own reactions.  First of all, let me stress that I am not a climatologist or any type of scientist, for that matter.  And if you're not a scientist, I really don't need to hear you or anyone else weighing in on what you think about climate change or whether or not it is a problem...I have a computer and can pull up the same links as you to prop up whatever preconceptions I have on the subject...so don't waste your time and mine going down this fruitless path.  Gore presents, naturally, the view that the vast majority of the scientific community has toward the issue: that human-caused climate change...primarily through the burning of fossil fuels...is adversely changing our climate by warming it through the greenhouse effect of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, and that a catastrophic level may be reached at some time in the foreseeable future if we don't change how we use energy, as well as in other areas of our economy.  The book shows several examples of the effects that climate change has already had in different areas, but doesn't delve adequately, in my opinion, about the indicators that actually give statistics and hard facts on the subject other than a brief reference on page 42 about the Environmental Protection Agency's 37 indicators of climate change.  And although the book's graphic design of varying fonts, colors, and many pictures makes it more attractive to the general public, there is neither a table of contents nor an index to look up specific points.  The book...and I'm presuming the film...is divided into two parts, the first focusing on the problem and the second a sort of handbook to instruct people-at-large how to engage the issue on different levels such as petitions, town hall meetings, interviews, and so on.  One suggestion the author made was to treat dependence on fossil fuels like smoking and to employ the same kind of ad campaigns that the anti-smoking movement has successfully employed.  Uh, well, only one problem: as the book said in another section, we're still 81% dependent on fossil fuels for our energy needs and last time I checked nicotine isn't the least bit necessary for our survival...big difference!  Also, the book in different sections mentioned that under the 2016 Paris Accords on climate change that Al Gore so highly praises, China, a vast developing economic power dominated by polluting, coal-burning plants, won't have to peak their CO2 emissions until 2030 (meaning they'll be increasing them until then) while elsewhere it's stated that we need to turn around our CO2 emissions by the year 2020 to avoid major negative consequences...say what? Furthermore, the author in the second half of the book has turned fighting manmade climate change...which in the book's first half he stresses has been firmly established to be true by strict scientific research and analysis...into a social cause to be campaigned for along with progressive issues that the Democratic Party has embraced, framing it as a partisan political issue that will dissuade Republicans from engaging in a positive way.  And finally, in that second part of the book, they advise what they call "Climate Reality Leaders" not to inundate people with actual facts on the subject but rather to be more personal about how climate change has affected them in their own lives in order to enhance their presentation's emotional appeal...is that really where we want to go on this?

You're entitled to believe whatever you want on the subject, but I happen to think that climate change is for real.  Does that mean that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause? The late Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear posited that deforestation may be more of a factor and that the scientists have made a false correlation.  Whatever the cause, I want our planet and our life on it to be more sustainable and it makes sense to cut our dependence on non-renewal sources of energy, anyway.  Like a lot of us, though, I think that it's foolish for me to be oh-so-concerned about my personal "carbon footprint" while on the other side of the Pacific Ocean China is churning out the carbon into the atmosphere without any compunction...if this is what "globalism" means then I don't care for it, sorry Al Gore...

Stock Market's Ten-Minute Thousand-Point Plunge This Morning

Wall Street's Dow Jones Average shocked the news world this morning as it went into a ten-minute free fall, finally leveling at a thousand points lower and scaring the bejesus (or dickens...or choose your own epithet) out of everybody. This is after Friday's loss of 531 points and right on the heels of a massive selloff in the Chinese stock market.  The prices rose back up to around down a little more that 100 points...but over the course of the afternoon, the average has crept back downward...it's 350 points at this writing.  The White House laid much of the blame for this fall at the doors of Congress, which it claims is dragging its feet at passing important fiscal legislation.  But what seems to be powering it all to me is the bursting of China's financial bubble...and their government's reevaluation of their currency...

It is too early right now to see whether this drop in the stock market is only a temporary scare like those in 1987 and 2010...or the sign of a traumatic economic downturn, as in 2008.  But the market suddenly has MY attention...

Just Finished Reading Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth

In 1931, writer Pearl S. Buck published The Good Earth, which I just finished reading, a story which explores the lives, beliefs, and traditions of a Chinese farmer and his family, set from the late 19th century and apparently projecting ahead beyond 1931 (which can be a bit historically problematic, as I'll explain later).  You can see in the above map of China, politically divided into its provinces, the story's locale of Anhui province highlighted in red.  And just east and slightly to the north is Jiangsu province, where protagonist Wang Lung, his wife O-Lan and their fledging family once moved to escape a famine in their homeland.  At the southwestern edge of Jiangsu lies Nanjing (back then called "Nanking", which is probably the "big city" described in the novel and takes on the meaning of the numerous references to the way things are "in the south".

The Good Earth reads like an Old Testament narrative, from Genesis, in that the language is simple and unadorned.  It depicts life from the viewpoint of Wang Lung, initially a poor Chinese farmer, as he first sets out to buy a wife (or "slave"...women in his society tend to be referred to as "slaves") from a nearby rich family's estate.  So he ends up with O-Lan, a faithful, industrious, but plain country woman who performs the functions he is primarily concerned with: she works tirelessly and bears him children...although he wants boys to further the family name, not girls, which he (as was the traditional Chinese custom back then) sees as a burden on the family, not an asset.  Buck very clearly sets out in The Good Earth to depict many of what we would now see as backward and unjust attitudes toward women in the context of how ordinary people in that culture saw things without thinking.  Wang Lung, for his part, although enmeshed in his particular culture's traditional views, is also in a sense a universal character in how he seems ashamed of his poverty...but quickly assumes an air of arrogant superiority over others once events turn in his favor and he gains wealth...

How far should I go in this review telling the story?  Well, I'm writing this not for an high school or college English class grade, where the teacher who would be reading this already knows the ending.  Instead, this article is to encourage prospective readers to pick up this good book and explore it for themselves.  So, I'll just leave the ending for those readers to discover and just bring up a couple more points...

Pearl S. Buck achieved great fame and accolades when The Good Earth came out, and she ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for it.  She followed up on it in the following four years with two more books.  You may want to read up on her interesting life afterwards, as she was active in various causes.  I'm not sure whether I'll read the other two books, but I'm leaning in favor of it...

Another point is that, although based in historical reality, this book chronologically projects itself into a future that never existed: Japan began its brutal invasion of China by starting with Manchuria in 1931.  By 1937 they occupied both Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, the setting of The Good Earth, drastically altered the landscape, and massacred hundreds of thousands of people.  The occupation there lasted until the war ended in 1945...and then there was the Chinese civil war between the Nationalists and Communists until 1949, when the latter ultimately prevailed.  The story line seems, however (and correct me if I'm wrong), to project itself into the future when all this tumult and disaster was happening...without acknowledging any of it.  But of course, how could the author in the early 1930s know of the upheaval that lay in store for China...or for the rest of the world, for that matter...

A Little Difficulty with China

I'm having just a little difficulty with China these days. I keep hearing how capitalistic it has become, with the free market dominating its economy. Many Chinese come to the U.S. for study and employment, and then return to their beloved homeland. I don't see here the extremism of the Cold War Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, where citizens of socialist "paradises" were shot trying to escape into supposedly evil, decadent capitalist nations across their borders. As a matter of fact, there is still one of these Cold War holdovers adjacent to China: North Korea (whose border is closed to China).

When I last went to Walt Disney World's Epcot Center, I visited the Chinese pavilion there. There was a large gift shop which contained "things Chinese". I saw a lot of traditional stuff, but strangely not a thing about socialism, communism, or the "revolution". Not a single picture of their bigshot revolutionary hero and leader Mao Zedong was to be found there. Yet, whenever the Chinese government comes out with anything, it is still clouded with all sorts of references to this clearly outmoded system that essentially collapsed on itself in the mid-1970's. So why...

Why is it a crime for a Chinese citizen like Liu Xiaobo to publicly advocate for a peaceful transition to a pluralistic, representative democracy that more appropriately reflects its newly found economic freedoms? Why is the Chinese government so uptight about Liu, who is in jail serving an eleven-year sentence, being picked for this year's Nobel Peace Prize...even to the point of pressuring other sovereign nations to boycott the ceremony?

The extent to which the Chinese authorities are going to quash any dissent or push for democratic reform tells me one thing: that like the repressive Iron Curtain regimes, their authority is built upon a "house of cards". No one believes in the Marxist-Leninist theory that the State still officially sanctions; it's just that for anyone serving within that government to condemn or even criticize it is taboo, a sure-fire formula for losing one's job or even freedom. But once the door gets jarred open a little and more and more people openly push for reform, an irreversible threshold may be passed and the ensuing torrent of freedom will be difficult for the repressive regime to withstand.