Their dystopia is more Brave New World than 1984.

You may have noticed I'm less active on Facebook these days. If you're reading this now, you may also have noticed that I'm very unactive on this blog. This is in part due to the increasingly stringent bonds the Chinese government is placing on the internet here. The latest round of crackdowns occurred in response to the unrest between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the western province Xinjiang--closely watched for its tendencies to express separatist desires...

Jeremy Goldkorn, head of the ever popular China-watcher website Danwei recently wrote a piece for The Telegraph about the Chinese internet and its controls:

Savvy Chinese Internet users know how to use proxy servers and other technologies to get around the Internet blocks: Chinese government Net censorship works not because it's impossible to open websites the government does not like, but because it's inconvenient to access those sites.

So most Chinese net users, who go online primarily for entertainment, don't notice and don't particularly care about censorship, as long as they can chat to their friends, play games, listen to music and watch videos. Their dystopia is more Brave New World than 1984.

Goldkorn reported the bold-faced line was unfortunately omitted by The Telegraph's editors. This is a recommended read for an idea about internet here. It takes a deal of proxying and VPN-ing and any loophole that works before it's eradicated to get to certain websites. In some cases, we just get use to not going to certain websites anymore. YouTube seems a long way from here these days. Facebook's block has made me renew my efforts to circumvent the internet controls, as I rely so heavily on it for simple communication with friends.