Whilst I might argue and protest about our own action/inaction in the West over the problems of China and the need for democratic reform, there is nothing that is going to be more effective than the 1.2 billion population of the World’s least understood country getting hacked off with the Government themselves

Yang’s fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend’s holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing Web site.

Of course, all Governments enforce censorship at some level. Whilst we might umm and err over Western censorship, many find uncomfortable the prospect of Chinese people not being able to talk about politics freely. Many feel rightly concerned that the whole of Flickr gets banned just because of some photos of the Tiananmen Square massacre appearing there.

But concern only carries you so far. Action is what actually changes things. As the above article points out, the Chinese Government are probably right at this point in time that this means they’re going to be able to keep the status quo going:

The battle for control of China’s Internet, however, will remain much more covert than confrontational, according to Liu Bin, an IT consultant with Beijing-based consulting firm BDA.

He believes it will take a long time before the government loosens control over Web content, especially because the Internet-savvy middle class is unlikely to take to the streets – like the farmers of Bobai county – over lack of Web access.

That might be the case today, but slowly, slowly, the real sleeping giant of China is starting to stir: its population. As the clichéd Chinese proverb might point out, “we live in interesting times”.