Cartoon Police are Cute Reminders of Gov't Surveillance

Yesterday I noticed a webpage on Sina.com where Chinese were being asked to sign an online petition protesting the West's "inaccurate" portrayal of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese government control of their homeland. The petition also linked to a comment site where people could express their opinions on what China is calling the "Tibet event" and Western media coverage of it. The comments were universally critical of the Western media and the Tibetans, especially the Dalai Lama and his "splittist clique". Many of the comments were extreme, even racist. Germans were frequently referred to in posts as Nazis.

While I know that Han Chinese in China are overwhelmingly in support of the continued occupation of Tibet and Xinjiang (the former East Turkistan) I thought it was possible that a few Chinese would have differing opinions. When I saw no such opinions expressed on the website I entered my own comments in Chinese that suggested that China's state-controlled media wasn't giving the whole story to residents of China. Within a few minutes my comment had been erased from the website. I tried it again, and again my comment was removed within minutes by the Internet police. Also, each time I entered a comment two cute little cartoon police marched onto my computer screen and warned me to obey their Internet laws and refrain from posting or reading comments harmful to social unity. Sometimes the cartoon police (the characters are called Jingjing and Chacha because jingcha is the Chinese word for police) walked onto my screen, other times they drove out in police cars or motorcycles.

Thus it is, in todays China the state controls everything that is said or posted on the Internet. Opinions contrary to the government's policies are not allowed to appear or are quickly removed. Websites purporting to represent the voice of the people are shams. The question is, do Chinese citizens know this? Do they realize that their government doesn't trust them to think for themselves? Do they care that their choices of information are limited?

It's hard to know because people here have to be very careful in what they say - if it isn't in agreement with state policy. Last week a dissident named Hu Jia who had posted commentary online that was critical of the Communist Party was sentenced to several years in jail. If I were Chinese I would be very hesitant to risk jail-time for expressing my thoughts. I doubt if the police that came to Hu Jia's apartment were quite as cute as Jingjing or Chacha.