A Government Major at California State University ask me some questions about Censorship in China, below are my answers:
What kind of censorship do you face from the government?
as a blogger, if I use the BLOG service in China,content will censored when submit post, filter some keywords; after posted, may get remove article request from authority. if I use the blog and hosting in abroad, the GFW will censored keywords and key url on Internet, connection will be reset or block when people try to access it who live in Main land China.
What punishment do you face for violating censorship regulations?
there is no punishment in law, even Constitution said will protect our speech rights. If I using China service and violating censorship, my site or BSP(blog service provider) will take down by authority; if I using abroad webhosting, my site will block in China. actually my blog https://www.zuola.com/weblog/ still blocked in China.
How do you get around or avoid censorship/punishment?
no way to avoid censorship in fact, but in technical we have some way, for example, promote RSS subscribe, enable SSL over HTTP, but not win for long time, GFW will Poisoning on DNS system to block China user to access specific web domain . but blogger still have subscribers because Google Reader still work and Google reader , and social network also help content distribute, and a lot of reader have bypass GFW capability.
Since you’ve been actively blogging, have you seen a change in how the government censors media or news?
Yes. government have to monitor BLOG to censor news, and a lot of media get news source from blogs, lot of Publicity instruction related with blog news. in China,mainstream media under pressure but blog not, so government monitor a lot of blog and give pressure to BSP to censor content.
What are you hopes for the future of censorship in China?
I hope censorship in transparent ,let us discuss why need censor in each case.