The Beeb has story on the Internet in China.
This is a bit of an “evergreen” piece — it seems like every year somebody does a story on how the Internet is changing China, but how the government is still cracking down on freedom of expression. But I mention it because it brought two questions to my mind:
1) Are there any bloggers in China? How about political ones?
2) If there are, would I be doing them a (potentially life-affecting) disservice if I actually did draw attention to them?
The second question is certainly not one I’m used to asking myself before linking to blogs… attention = life in the blogosphere, right? But in the light of China’s attitudes, it is one that I and anybody else thinking of mentioning such blogs must consider, in good conscience. And it’s not just China, of course: I’d love to hear from bloggers in other not-so-democratic states. (In particular, I would be very very interested in hearing from anybody in Iran — even if you’re not a blogger, and even if you just want to say ‘hi’ and don’t want any public attention).
Anyway, given that line of thought, I guess we have a new policy here at TTLB: I only link to bloggers in totalitarian states by request only. And no, the EU doesn’t count.