More on The Wikipedia in China
Yesterday, it was reported that Wikipedia was now available in China. This is impressive news, but is not the full story. The English version of Wikipedia is mostly available (it depends on , but the Chinese version is not (http://zh.wikipedia.org/). I learned this from Isaac Mao, the first Chinese blogger, a VC, an organizer for the Chinese Blogger Con, and the liaison for the Chinese Wikipedia.
I met Isaac Mao this summer when I was in China. Accessing the internet in China was both easy and difficult. There was an internet cafe in every town I went to; needless to say this was very convenient. Many hotels also had computers. The difficulty came in getting access to the computer in the first place and then trying to access the data i needed. To access a computer in an internet cafe I always had to provide my passport number, in some cases I had to sign a scary contract. Once I was able to access the internet it was tough to know what would work. I could never get to any version of the Wikipedia or the google cache (my attempt to get around the WP restriction). Luckily, there are a ton of other sites that contained the type of tourist information I was looking for. This is a great step forward for tourists, expats, and English-speaking natives, but there appears to be a long way to go.
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This is definitely a means to control regime critics, and has nothing to do with spam or software piracy control. Spam is not generated in internet cafes, but by dedicated servers. Today more than 70% of the spam servers worldwide are located in China.
Brady, Thanks for sharing your experience using the web in China. It is quite sad with all the restrictioins but it is better than none.It has a long way to go indeed.
And Roland is right. Passport numbers are for control and tracking. Even the locals have to give their identity card/number so that all accesses can be tracked.
strange tho, the bigger internet cafes i went to in Beijing and Zhengzhou didn't ask for my id (there WAS one nestled in a beijing housing estate that did ask, so i left).
as for tracking, im not so sure if it's such a simple issue. i wonder if there are laws/regulations (in the same way every website has to register with the government) and some simpler logistical issue that giving an id solves for the local small internet cafe.
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Tung Wai Yip [10.13.06 09:19 AM]
Record the passpost number? Sounds like an unique Chinese approach to the identity and accountability issue. I wonder if such tight control also give them more leverage to control the spammers. Perhaps not.