A Quote by Howard Rheingold
The Chinese government tried to keep a lid on the SARS crisis, but there were 160 million text messages in three days sent by Chinese citizens. These are early indications that it's going to be difficult for people who used to have control over the news to maintain that level of control.
Related Quotes
One way in which we can encourage the Chinese government to take more vigorous action to control food safety in their country is by just saying we're not going to buy Chinese foods until they get their system cleaned up. Admittedly it's a difficult system to get under control because an astonishing percentage - maybe 80 percent - of the foods in China are produced in small backyard operations.
You can't make good decisions that are going to be meaningful, productive, when you lose control, and you have to maintain mental control, emotional control and to be able to perform physically up to your own particular level of competency; you have to keep your emotions under control.
Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.
The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.
As soon as there's a crisis, there are people who take charge and want to control others. Climate-change catastrophe and human migration and immigration are great for corporate and governmental control over people, and we have to contend with that. I should say, I see corporate control behind everything that the government is working on right now.
I didn't learn Chinese to write 'Confucius.' That would've been a monumental task. I have three friends who can translate Chinese text for me; all three helped me with my research on Confucius. They are acknowledged in my acknowledgements in the book.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
One of the things that I realized when I left office was that in the 1990's citizens across the world applied more power than they had ever had, as compared with the government, because of more people living under democracies than dictatorships for the first time, the power of the internet, which the young Chinese used to basically change China's policy on the SARS epidemic, and shut it down, and because of the rise in non-governmental organizations like my foundation.
Even though some heartless North Korean, Korean-Chinese, and Chinese citizens have exploited vulnerable defectors for money, I witnessed many acts of kindness by the Chinese.
Right after September 11, 2001, there weren't really any blogs in China, but there were a lot of Chinese chatrooms - and there were a lot of conversations in which Chinese netizens were saying things like, 'served them right.' That was definitely not the official Chinese government policy - which condemned the terrorists.
Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.
I define democracy as control by the people. Slaves are those who allow others to control their lives. Insofar as people succeed in solving their problems fairly and efficiently at a grassroots level, they retain control over their lives. Insofar as they delegate their problem solving to a higher authority, they lose control over their lives.
Chinese movies are not just about making Chinese local movies. It's about the Chinese money, the Chinese creativeness participating in a global movie. The problem is not the government not supporting this, they of course support this big time. The problem is whether other people are capable of doing the same thing I'm doing.
Hong Kong people may be ethnically Chinese, but lots of people do not consider ourselves, including me, as Chinese citizens.
I've read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.
When U.S. commercial interests press the Chinese government to do a better job of policing Chinese websites for pirated content, a blind eye is generally turned to the fact that ensuing crackdowns provide a great excuse to tighten mechanisms to censor all content the Chinese government doesn't like.
Related Authors
Andrea Dworkin Quotes
American
Critic
bell hooks Quotes
American
Critic
Charles Lamb Quotes
English
Critic
Charlie Brooker Quotes
English
Critic
Chuck Klosterman Quotes
American
Critic
Elvis Mitchell Quotes
American
Critic
Henry Giroux Quotes
American
Critic
Henry Louis Gates Quotes
American
Critic
Jerry Saltz Quotes
American
Critic
Kimberly Guilfoyle Quotes
American
Critic
Mike Gallagher Quotes
American
Critic
Roger Ebert Quotes
American
Critic
Roland Barthes Quotes
French
Critic
Terry Eagleton Quotes
English
Critic
Walter Benjamin Quotes
German
Critic
William Hazlitt Quotes
English
Critic