Why do communists censor

Along with being expelled from the ruling party, he is stripped of all pay and benefits and is being referred for criminal prosecution for numerous violations of discipline and on suspicion of bribery, it said.

Such notices are generally brief and provide little information of the charges, almost always related to some form of corruption. Party officials and internet companies are expected guide public opinion by deleting postings seen as deviant, while content seen as insulting the party or nation can result in a massive backlash from online nationalists and possible criminal prosecution.

President and party leader Xi Jinping has also led a years-long crackdown on corruption that has ensnared numerous serving and retired officials in what some see as politically motivated prosecutions. Sections U. Unless the principle of 'Don't blame the speaker" is observed genuinely and not falsely, the result will not be 'Say all you know and say it without reserve.

Thus, on the balance, it seems communist theory is compatible with freedoms of speech, information and protest, but it is far from a fundamental right such as it is under democracy and individual-centered ethics systems like that of Kant and Locke. Freedom of information should only be granted when communist society as a whole is likely to benefit. In this light, it makes much more sense that communist leaders, while still a persecuted opposition philosophy, would strongly support speech rights and later reject them when communism becomes the ruling system.

At that point, access to oppositional speech and information is no longer beneficial to the communist state, and thus no longer needed in communist philosophy. China in Practice Modern day China, more than almost any other country in the world, severely restricts its citizens freedom of speech and expression.

Oddly enough, Article 35 of the current Chinese constitution, written in , stipulates "Citizens of the PRC have freedom of speech, publication, assembly, association, procession and demonstration. China has a tightly controlled traditional media, China forces all published information to be from official sources and to be vetted through the state.

China also has strong restrictions against assembly and worship, demonstrated over the last few days with a crackdown on Tibetan protesters. Many assumed the government's ability to crack down on dissent would be destroyed by the increased prominence of a dynamic and nearly infinite internet space. However, China has adapted it's censorship policies to the internet, and by many standards managed to stay ahead of the curve in restricting free speech in the digital realm.

Internet use in China is blossoming. As of over 94 million users were online and in the China Internet Network Information Center, considered the premier source for measuring Chinese internet use, pegged the number of Chinese users at million.

This number will only grow in the foreseeable future, with the booming mobile market, more and more a popular portal to the internet, estimated to hit million by China Presents: The Internet This realm has been modified from it's original version. It has been formatted to fit The Party's view of the world. This internet usage boom presents a variety of new challenges to a government adept at censoring traditional media types. The internet is much more vast than the physical realm controlled by China.

It is not susceptible to the traditional local control structure relying on dedicated neighborhood party leaders to enforce edicts from the centralized government.

Furthermore, the barriers to traditional information distribution of geography, money, and access to printing machinery, are no longer an issue in a digital realm where a cell phone or a few cents can buy time on the internet and allow anyone to blog their opinions. China has responded with a vast centralized censorship program. One study by a group at Harvard in , "found blocking of almost every kind of content. If it exists, China blocks at least some of it.

Some of the most likely to be blocked are related to independence movements in Taiwan and Tibet, protest groups like the Falun-Gong, political parties opposed to the state, and sites on democracy. For the majority of Chinese web-users, these controversial topic-specific sites are not part of their daily internet routine, which focuses mostly on sports, entertainment and gaming sites.

These users may have only the vaguest notion of the filtering being conducted by the government. Recently, however, the Great Firewall of China has evoked increased backblash as it has begun to block more popular websites like the photo-sharing site, Flickr and selected MySpace pages.

China's filtering and censorship program is regarded as the most sophisticated and effective in the world.