I'm blocked in China

(Though they love me in Japan ;-)

I keep forgetting that I'm (Blogspot is) blocked in China. I was reminded of this when I emailed the link to my post to Jerry in gratitude for the Writely invite and he said he couldn't read it because of the GFW (Great Fire Wall).

I thought of it again looking at Sun Bin, which has a mirror at MSN and instructions for reading from China.

Tom often says of the USSR and Iran that 'The leaders pretend(ed) to rule and the people pretend(ed) to obey.' This is also somewhat true of China's internet policy. They might ban some things, maybe those are the high-profile things, but the workarounds are pretty easy.

Again, as Tom says: let the Party rule and open China up to markets. Democracy will come later.

Also on the subject of China: I saw on Sun Bin something I hadn't seen reported elsewhere: Hu Jintao gave copies of 'The Art of War' as gifts on his visit, including to President Bush. Either they want to be friends, or they're really confident they can still beat us weak occidentals, even when giving us the playbook ;-)