Google has been under constant cyber attack from China. Operation Aurora was a large scale one and attracted wide media coverage, but hacking of individual accounts has been going on for quite a while. Many Chinese human right activists and foreign journalists stationed in China have the experience that their gmail account is secretly redirected to another account.

Even worse, Google's four year in China has also been subject to varies accusations made by Chinese state media. China's State Broadcaster, CCTV, once accused Google of "spreading unhealthy information to the country's teenagers", but Chinese netizens have soon discovered that the person ("victim") interviewed in the programme is nothing but a CCTV intern.

I'm not against censorship, but the Chinese authority has a long history of abusing this tool for communist party's own good. In an environment where there is no independent media, Internet neutrality is vital for people to access unbiased and factual information. Not in China. The dispute between Google and Chinese authority has been going on for more than two month now, but even the Chinese authority are unable to specify which Law Google has violated - What they want Google and other Chinese websites to do cannot be put under public eyes.

What Google have done today is nothing more than corrects the mistake it has made 4 years ago, but it has created a far greater impact today than if it had never entered the Chinese market. By taking this simple but definitive act of defiance, Google has told the world that money cannot buy everything, and Chinese government cannot hold its own 1.4 billion people to ransom and use it to ask  the western world to obey.

And for that, I applaud Google's courageous decision.  I also want to see other foreign internet companies in China, especially Microsoft and its search engine bing are reacting to this news. Will they also do the right thing, or continuing act like Marx has described – capitalists will do everything to maximise the profit.

One curious Chinese bloger wondered, how many days in a year are outlawed by "local laws"? He worte a script and found out that, out of 366 days, 11 of them will result the censorship notice on the search result page, these are:

* 13 January
* 31 May
* 4 June
* 13 June
* 20 June
* 25 June
* 30 June
* 5 July
* 19 September
* 13 Octorber
* 18 December

The rationale behind some of these censored dates are quite obvious, like 4 June is the date symbolises Tiananmen Square Massacre and the recent riots in China's Uyghur dominated Xinjiang Region started on 5 July.

However, even as a politically minded Chinese, I don't quite get why the rest of dates are considered "sensitive". I checked Wikipedia, there are some past events related to China, however, most of them are quite normal and can be hardly considered as sensitive events.

Parents should be prosecuted for allowing their children to play age-restricted video games, the chief censor says.

Current laws allow punishments of up to three months jail or a $10,000 fine for those caught supplying R-18 games to children. While there have been no prosecutions so far, chief censor Bill Hastings told the Dominion Post the laws should be enforced to help prevent the effects of repeat exposure to violence and sexual violence on young people. (via New Zealand Herald)

Well the first thing I started to wonder is how they are going to enforce that law. Sure that lousy TV3 programme called Target can hire under aged actors to buy restricted games, but unlike illegal selling of tobacco, distribution of games, especially compute games, does not work that way. Today's kids are pretty clever, much cleverer than what we use to. 10 years ago no parental control software can lock me away from computer, today, I recently heard a story from China,  a 14 year old kid is now spying on their parents' activities on computer.

That's a very unique case but most young people do know how to download pirated stuffs online - parents will also be responsible for this if S92A came to force last month (luckily it hasn't) as the Internet access is under the name of a parent. If this happens, I mean, is this really a fault of parents? They tried their best, education, use parental control software, lock out the computer ... but parents aren't nannies, even a nanny cannot watch with children 24/7.

There's a difference of wording, "allowing" or "supplying". Supply is a process that you handed out something that you know it is illegal, allowing can mean you simply don't know. Sure if a parent buys a clearly labelled r-18 games for their children then it is a offence, but if you simply don't know, and don't have access to information on what your children is playing?

They plan to tear down that page and return the rest of the magazine.

First I want to make my point very clear: I don't like Fa Lun Gong, I always feel disgraced of them, and I will never accept Fa Lun Gong as part of Chinese Culture.

So I totally agree the view of those fellow Chinese students.

BTW, if you don't agree with me, you are most likely a non-Chinese influenced by Fa Lun Gong's propaganda. Their propaganda skills are far beyond your expectation, even more skilled than Communist Party of China, the master of propaganda.

Just a simple example, Fa Lun Gong member claim that they are non-political, that's totally untrue. Fa Lun Gong is nothing but a political group. I personally talked to some of its members, they have absolutely no knowledge on any of their "spiritual pratices", apart from "how bad the communist regime is."

Those are not the Fa Lun Gong people you saw? I already told you about their propaganda skills. Oh and, I believe you've never been spammed by Fa Lun Gong? Well that's because they only spread politically driven spams in Chinese.

I can list another hundreds of reasons for why you shouldn't trust Fa Lun Gong, but it's not the point I want to talk about.

....

Although I may agree with my fellow students' views, I feel extremely offended by their action.

Before the Fa Lun Gong is outlawed in New Zealand, the group and its members entitle every right rest of us who live in this country enjoy, and that includes the right to express their views, freely.

And most importantly, for me, as a free person, regardless of my nationality, entitle to read stuffs that aren't censored to favour one point of view.

I lived in China, a country where everything in media must be approved by government's propaganda department for most of my life. I absolutely hated it, the reason is simple: I'm not a mentally retarded person who need others to tell me what is right or wrong, even what I have been told is actually true.

I'm not a computer whizz but in terms of bypass the Great Firewall of China, I have at least a master degree on it. I don't necessarily agree with some "anti-Chinese views" outside the "Greatwall", but I believe it's my right to have free access to them and make my own judgment.

So I treasure the free environment right here in New Zealand. I strongly believe that while everyone and every government entitles to have their own views, no one has the right to force others to accept one particular view by any means, including censorship.

I treat the incident as a form of media censorship - Chinese government removes materials that it doesn't want Chinese people to see; those people tear down the page that they don't want you and me to see.

Me and most of my friends in China yearn to have a environment free of media censorship, and yet my fellow countrymen are so eagar to build a new Great Wall of Censorship right here in this country!? I just cannot believe it.

What I have found really surprising is, the people who organised the stealing, were largely the same people who organised the protest to NZ Media's biased view on Tibet last Saturday(all organisation works happened on a Chinese BBS), while most of them have no comment on the heavy censorship in China.

So I take it as they like censorship, as long as it favours their view.

In my view, those students are no more than Chinese partriots. They believe in partriotism, the partriotism as in that famous quote made by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".