Over the past several months I have been discussing this topic with several civil libertarian writers. A number of different organizations such as Freedom House (which publishes an annual report “Freedom in the World“) have tried to quantify – via a number of metrics – the various levels of police statism.
While hardly scientific, I have created a simple litmus test to be used here in China:
Can you publish “We live in a police state” in public and not have it removed/censored and not end up in jail?
For example, there are a near infinite amount of anti-Bush, anti-Obama, anti-Schwarzenegger, anti-Rick Astley, anti-ALF sites throughout the series of tubes. Yet many of these politically-tuned sites are made and hosted in the US, yet are not (currently) blocked nor are the authors thrown into US jails. (Though that could change if the extraditions stemming from IP and whistle-blowing cases of Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange are any indication).
The same cannot be said here in China, where the mere mentioning of civil mass unrest or political results in you being disappeared, your accounts being deleted and your own name being thrown down the memory hole (Liu Xiaobo anyone?).
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