China's Communist Party
will do whatever it takes to stay in power. Censorship is just one tool
-- along with quickly quelling civil disobedience.
Of course, China feels
like a utopia of liberty when compared with the repressive North Korean
regime. I distinctly remember feeling a sense of freedom and relief when
landing in Beijing after a recent visit to Pyongyang.
In the DPRK, the average
citizen has never heard of the Internet or social media. Contact with
the outside world is forbidden for all but the most elite members of
this reclusive society. Propaganda rules the television airwaves and
fills the pages of state-run newspapers.
Censorship in China
The Sony hack story has
received limited news coverage in China. Stories have appeared on CCTV's
newscasts and in newspapers like China Daily, though with far less
prominence than some other international news outlets.
In Shenyang on Tuesday,
an Internet search for "North Korea" on China's leading (and
government-controlled) search engine Baidu.com revealed a list of mostly
positive articles about the DPRK.
A Baidu search for
"North Korea hack" revealed just one nearly two-week-old article naming
the DPRK as "one of several suspects" in the Sony hacking investigation.
An identical search on unrestricted Google on Wednesday found more than
36 million articles.
When questioned by
foreign reporters on Tuesday, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
spokeswoman Hua Chunying shied away from directly addressing the issue
on the Sony hacking probe.
"We need sufficient
evidence before drawing any conclusion," she said at a news conference,
adding that the U.S. and North Korea should communicate.
Of course, any substantive communication is unlikely given the two countries have no diplomatic ties.
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