The Great Firewall

Well, its been a while since I've posted but I can rightfully thank China for that. Last summer when I was adamant about writing down my thoughts and stories of Beijing, I quickly discovered that my blog had been blocked. I don't know whether I was singled out in particular or all of blogger was unreachable, but it drained my blogging spirit. This sort of practice in China is not unusual. I have a feeling that this week, the Great Firewall of China has lifted its censors on me to concentrate on bigger fish. In Beijing, this week has been over shadowed by the the Commun!st Partys National Congress meeting which is held every 5 years (my upside down "i" was intentional). The session is very important in that it lays out the ground work for the next five years, appoints some new members for the 9 member Politiburo committee, and most importantly it will name Hu Jintao's successor who will take power of the country in 2012. The gathering of such influential men surrounding such important issues in an authoritarian state comes with it a security force unimaginable in Western countries. The army has locked down Tiananmen and all surrounding buildings, a policemen are placed on every corner and in every subway, and my usual media and networking websites have been blocked (new york times, wikipedia, facebook, livejounal). The Firewall employees that are numbered in the tens of thousands are also starting to censor websites that offer free proxy servers - its seems to be getting worse and worse.



I know I must sound like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory but the truth is that Beijing is currently a police state with paralysed information and communication channels. Beijing Public Security Bureau has also taken advantage of their numbers on the street and have begun searching everywhere for foreigners and asking for their residence permit (for every day you do not have your permit after 24 hours of arriving in Beijing, its 200 kuai or 25 dollars). I have heard some terrible stories of outrageous fines from my expat buddies so I make sure that I am always up to date and in the clear.

But although my permit and visa are all in order, I do not deal with or talk to Beijing cops since they typically bring nothing but mafan, trouble. Yesterday, a policeman had put his arm out while yelling at me to get off my bike, for some questioning no doubt. I played dumb, said ni hao and sped away into a sea of cars, dump trucks, motorcycles, bikes, rickshaws, garbage wagons, mobile vending stands, and pedestrians. In China, you don't need to be very fast to outrun a station wagon (the standard cop car in Beijing).