Tag: Natasha Taylor

Explained: China And Media Censorship

Natasha Taylor / / Asia

5547607176_bd3c82dc94_bThe BBC have reported that China are making further moves to curb their internet use after calls for more regulation of the internet.

The president, Xi Jinping, has said that he wants a global system to help fight online crime and terrorism, but campaigners for free speech complain it would end in more censorship and surveillance.

But why does China already have so much censorship over internet and the media in the country?

The media censorship that is in place in China is seen as a way of the Communist Party of China keeping their reign in the county. One way of doing this has been to censor all media and internet usage so that they can prevent any unapproved reformist ideas or ideologies that could potentially make people want to change the way the country is run.

The censorship also prevents Chinese citizens from discovering or learning more about the past and/or current failures of the Communist Party that could potentially create or inflame any anti-government sentiment.

China has also blocked any access to foreign governments’ websites. It is though that this has been done in order to prevent citizens from discovering and learning about other systems of governance that are in place around the world, which they may demand for themselves.

There are two ways in which China have implemented media censorship. The first way is known as ‘The Great FireWall’ which is the government simply blocking citizen’s access to foreign websites.  The second way is known as the ‘Golden Shield’ and is a system for domestic surveillance which was set up in 1998 by the Ministry of Public Security

Because the Chinese government are so keen to keep out Western media and have banned popular social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. and have replaced them with their own sites YouKu and WeChat.

However, in recent years the Chinese government have introduced technology that doesn’t block a whole website, but instead restricts access to specific pages in addition to certain searches on sites such as Google.

According to The Economist, The “Freedom on the Net 2012” report, issued by Freedom House, an American organisation that tracks global trends in political freedom, ranked China as the third most restrictive country in the world when it comes to internet access and that overall, there are thought to be around 100,000 people, employed both by the state and by private companies, policing China’s internet around the clock.

Photo by: MinimalMo

All About The Volkwagen Scandal

Natasha Taylor / / Europe, North America, UK

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Volkswagen recently hit global headlines as it was uncovered that they had been cheating in emission tests by making its cars appear far less polluting than they are.

The Guardian reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that 482,000 VW diesel cars on American roads were emitting up to 40 times more toxic fumes than permitted – and VW has since admitted the cheat affects 11m cars worldwide.

Volkswagen’s “defeat device” wasn’t a physical device, but instead a programme in the engine software that effectively sensed when the car was being tested and as a result activated equipment that reduced emissions. However, this was not the case in regular driving as the software turned off and increased emissions far above legal limits – up to 40 times of what is legal in the US.

It has also meant that far more harmful NOx emissions, including nitrogen dioxide, have been pumped into the air than was thought – on one analysis, between 250,000 to 1m extra tonnes every year. The hidden damage from these VW vehicles could equate to all of the UK’s NOx emissions from all power stations, vehicles, industry and agriculture, says the Guardian.

It is not yet known exactly which systems Volkswagen modified, but experts are said to be focusing on parts of the exhaust system that are designed to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant that can cause emphysema, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases.

The Environmental Protection Agency said in September that it would order Volkswagen to recall seven of its American car models with affected engines, which amount to total of about 500,000 vehicles.

Volkswagen will be getting in touch with anyone who has a car that has been affected as they now face $18bn (£12bn) in penalties under the US Clean Air Act, which allows fines of up to $37,500 per car.

In addition, the European Parliament has now also voted to set up a committee to investigate the scandal in more depth.

Why Abolishing Their One-Child Policy May Not Help China

Natasha Taylor / / Middle-East, UK, Uncategorized

4011344291_527f42d20b_oClaims have been made that China abolishing their one child policy won’t help the country.

The policy will come into effect from March 2016 but it is unclear whether ending China’s more than 30 year-long child policy will trigger a demographic change that the Chinese Communist Party hopes for.

The East Asia Forum have reported that the abandonment of the one-child policy may not cause a significant rise in the population of China.

They’ve said that Yuan Xin, an expert in population studies at Nankai University in Tianjin, has observed that the traditional Chinese concept of having multiple children has changed alongside developments in China’s economy and society over the past few decades.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) itself has agreed that, ‘it has been a mainstream concept among Beijing residents to give birth to fewer and better children after decades of the family planning policies the city adopted in the 1970s’.

The one-child era prompted both a change in mind set more people are opting for fewer children, especially in big cities such as Beijing. Couples with only one child mainly live in the cities, where the cost of housing and education is comparatively high. Most of them tend to choose not to have a second child owing to financial pressures.

Figures released in a survey conducted by China Youth Daily, 84.9 per cent of respondents reported worrying about the financial pressure of raising a second child. Couples who are wealthy enough that they can afford to bring up a second child are usually over 40 years old and are confronted with difficulties in giving birth.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Most Chinese families spend more proportionately. It costs on average about 190,000 yuan, or about $30,000 to raise a child through age 18 in China, according to researchers at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu. That’s about 15% of the average Chinese household income.

Hopeful estimates say the new relaxation will bring between 3 million and 6 million babies a year in the five years from 2017 and 120 billion yuan to 240 billion yuan in additional spending, according to Credit Suisse, though the last birth-policy relaxation, in 2013, yielded far fewer second-child applications than expected.

 

Photo by: joan vila

China Ends One-child Policy. But Why Was It Introduced?

Natasha Taylor / / Asia

2514981377_7a52e8c635_oChina has officially ended their one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children for the first time in over three decades.

The announcement followed a four-day Communist party summit in Beijing where China’s top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of heightened concerns about the economy.

But why was the policy first implemented?

In the late 1970’s China introduced the one-birth policy as a measure to reduce the country’s birth rate and slow down the population growth rate.

In 1950, China’s rate of population change was 1.9 per cent each year. This may not sound too high, however, a country needs a growth rate of only 3 per cent for the population of the country to double in less than 24 years.

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Previous Chinese governments had had encouraged people to have a lot of children to increase the country’s workforce, but by the 1970’s the government realised the current rates of population growth would soon become unsustainable.

Benefits promised by the policy included increased access to education for all, plus childcare and healthcare offered to families that followed this rule. However, it was largely resisted in rural areas where it was traditional to have large families.

Couples who did not follow the one-child policy didn’t receive the benefits and were fined. People in China also claimed that some women who became pregnant after they had already has a child were forced to have an abortion and many women were forcibly sterilised.

Due to the traditional preference for boys in China, large numbers of female babies have ended up homeless or in orphanages. In 2000 it was reported that 90 per cent of foetuses that were aborted in China were female. As a result of this, gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted and it is thought that today, men outnumber women by more than 60 million.

Although there were many problems that came from the introduction of the policy, the birth rate did subsequently fall, and the rate of population currently sits at around 0.7 per cent.

But will the change in policy be good for China?

 

Photos by: Osrin and BBC