The following are two seemingly unrelated articles coming out of Asia that to me indicate the profound change that has been going on in China since the 1970s. What do these articles have to do with MUCP? I'm not sure, but maybe it is important to the central government that a central server system must be maintained that provides the central government the mechanism to screen and control information that flows throughout China. As long as the central government can control subversive forces such as the democracy movement while at the same time encourage the free flow of business and scientific information, the better it will be able to maintain its long term plan of a more powerful China, eventually able to dominate its part of the world and maybe even the coming century.
Again, what does this have to do with MUCP? Maybe it is in the interest of the central government to have a way of channeling internet commerce through a central system that the government can easily monitor and the least expensive machine available will have the best role in providing the central government with the tool to accomplish its goal. The central government's control and sky high telecom costs can be a way to guide internet traffic into its server system and using the least expensive mechanism can serve to guide the mass of the traffic there. Who can provide the central government with the least expensive, most capable tool?
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Walking around the Lei Feng Memorial Museum in
the grim industrial city of Fushun, Liaoning
province, one wonders what decade it is.
The museum is devoted to a 22-year-old
worker-soldier killed in a road accident in August
1962. He has become the longest and
most-celebrated "model" person in the 50 years of
communist rule.
Entering the museum, the first thing on view is a
giant bust of Lei, with a boyish face and big smile.
On the wall are personal inscriptions by the three
most important leaders since 1949 - Mao Zedong ,
Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin . No other
individual has received such an honour.
The life depicted in the museum - like that of a
Catholic saint, without sin and without sex - is so
flawless it is hard to believe. Lei was born in
December 1940 to a family of landless peasants in
Hunan.
By the age of seven, he had lost all six members of
his family. Some died of hunger, his father was
beaten to death by the Japanese and his mother
was forced to commit suicide by a local landlord.
He studied for six years at primary school, before
working in the local government as an errand boy.
In November 1958, Lei was transferred to a steel
plant in Anshan, in the northeast, where he
operated an earthmover.
In January 1960, he was conscripted into the PLA,
joining the Communist Party in November that year
and becoming a squad leader in June 1961,
stationed in Fushun.
At 10am on August 15, 1962, a fellow soldier
named Qiao Anshan was driving a truck which
knocked down a pole. The pole hit Lei on the
head. He died at noon the same day.
The dark green truck is in the museum, as is the
yellow earthmover, Stalin Number 80, that Lei
operated at the steel plant. It was retired in 1995
after 37 years in operation.
Lei's early years are shown in paintings, the last four
in photographs. He always wears the same smile
because he had already become a model worker
during his 13 months at the steel plant. Also on
display are spanners and tools, his toothbrush and
towel, diaries and letters.
The portrait of Lei is of a model human being and
communist caring for others and wanting nothing for
himself, honest and hard-working, obedient to the
party and throwing himself into whatever task he
was given.
He seems never to have had a girlfriend or sexual
relations.
For the sceptical, the museum is creative fiction, not
history, as accurate as the grain production figures
during the Great Famine of 1958-62, in which false
statistics helped cause the deaths of more than 30
million people.
For others, it is a mixture of fact and fiction, of the
life of a good man embroidered and improved by
party propagandists to suit their purposes.
To Wang Yong, former head of the city's
Communist Youth League, such views are an insult.
"Lei is a spiritual hero who has influenced several
generations of Chinese. No one can replace him.
His values are eternal."
Mr Wang has helped arrange national seminars and
study groups on Lei Feng. The museum attracts
150,000 people a year and sends exhibits to cities
all over China.
One Fushun man in his 60s said people responded
to Lei according to their age. He said: "He means
more to people of my generation. He recalls a time
when personal relations counted for much and
money for little. There was little entertainment 20
years ago, just communist heroes. Now we have so
much choice on television US films, sport, dramas
and travel.
"But young people are cynical and more interested
in money. For many of them, if Lei were alive
today, they would regard him as a fool and
simpleton, waiting to be duped by someone."
scmp.com
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Officials in China have vowed to crack down on
unauthorised Internet telephone services.
The country's ministry of information industry said such
services were costing it hundreds of millions of dollars
and warned that they amounted to the smuggling of
information.
The Internet draws mixed signals from the Chinese
Government. It has praised it as a tool for economic
growth but at the same time it has blocked politically
sensitive Websites, increased controls on Internet cafes
and recently jailed a man for providing a list of e-mail
addresses to exiled dissidents.
A court case in south-eastern Fuzhou has highlighted
official anxiety at the impact of the Net. Two brothers
who offered an alternative to China's notoriously
expensive international phone calls through the Internet
found their business closed, their equipment confiscated
and were accused of harming national security.
The men appealed against their arrests and to general
surprise the court found in their favour, saying no relevant
law existed at the time. Yet the brothers are still in
detention while the authorities seek to have the ruling
overturned.
"There are some illegal operators who have been
colluding with foreign companies and have seriously
eroded China's income from international
telecommunications", said an official at the ministry of
information industry.
"The figures are huge, several billion yuan so far. In fact
this is information smuggling. These people are evading
official controls and we're going to crack down very hard
on them."
The spokesman said the authorities would respect the
court's final ruling on the Fuzhou case. He also said that
China would license a number of officially approved
Internet phone services this year.
But the brothers' action has won support from unlikely
quarters, including the official English-language
newspaper, the China Daily.
An opinion piece said the Fuzhou court decision had
been welcomed by local people, who were tired of the
government's telephone monopoly and at the
unreasonably high prices for international calls.
The state-run China Telecom currently controls 95% of
the market.
news.bbc.co.uk
Charles |
