Pakablog!

Good heavens no, the Chinese are not racist. Ask any of them – they’d complain about mistreatment abroad; being looked down on by natives of other countries (after spoiling it with mass emigration); being ripped off by shops etc.. The Chinese on the other hand live in a ‘peaceful, harmonious society’.

Harmonious my foot.

An SCMP article yesterday talked of “Dozens of black tourists and expatriates, including the son of the Grenadian ambassador” [Joslyn Whiteman Jnr] being badly assaulted by Beijing police.

“At least three people, including Mr Whiteman, were beaten with rubber truncheons despite few signs that they were resisting arrest.” …

“Witnesses said the round-up appeared to be aimed squarely at black men. Those who tried to photograph the incident were made to delete the images from their mobile phones and cameras.” …

“I saw a man being beaten by six guys in camouflage. He was covered in blood. The police seemed to be targeting anyone who was black.”

Thabo Lieket, a 24-year-old student from Lesotho, was among those arrested and later released without charge. He thought the police assumed he was dealing in drugs because he was black, he said.

- and there you have it, people being attacked because they were black.

It’s no secret that drugs are very easy to come by in Beijing: head to any of the several bar areas and you can easily find dealers, usually black. So yes, although black people don’t give themselves a very good reputation amongst the locals in this city, an indiscriminate ‘drugs bust’ against all people who are of the same colour – that is inexcusable.

Even domestically people here don’t think much of those from certain other provinces, and if you’re white you can often get better treatment than the locals.

Ask any Hong Kong person what they think of Indians or Pakistani’s – and it would probably be negative.

Meanwhile, Chinese people are flocking overseas, jumping queues, spitting, acting arrogant (thinking they have the right to do so since they can afford the trip) then coming back complaining of mistreatment.

I’m sorry, but how is it we live in a ‘peaceful, harmonious society’?

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Internet users in China have long discovered the swathes of sites that exist allowing users to browse anonymously – but the problems with these is that many don’t work with certain mechanisms like Ajax, it’s less convenient to browse the net through a proxy, and it generally only works for HTTP/FTP protocols.

Others have discovered that creating a simple VPN link to an overseas server allows your whole computer to be transparently connected via a secure link (where the censors cannot monitor) to the host – but this routes all traffic and can be slow particularly for local sites.

Since we use a linux server as our internet gateway, it’s easy to build a permanent VPN link through an overseas server and selectively perform NAT based on destination IP. The result : fast internet locally, but unfettered access to usually blocked sites.

Whatever the “technical problems” that might exist in China, it is certain that the authorities will be fighting a losing battle on this one.

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