China Internet censorship failing

This is good, as is the fact that the Chinese people are starting to be able to make the government serve it, not the other way around. [Link]

Because of that, even as China tries to crack down, it simply leads to more people figuring out ways around the barriers:

But for each critic the authorities stop, more rise. "There are simply too many people," says Xiao Qiang, a scholar who studies the Chinese Internet at the University of California at Berkeley. "They can do that to a very small group ... but the approach certainly is not good enough to intimidate all the voices online."

Mr. Xiao points to the example of Liu Xiaobo, detained in December 2008 for his role in creating Charter 08, a sweeping call for political and legal reform in China. Mr. Liu was sentenced on Christmas Day to 11 years in prison for subversion. But since his detention, thousands more Chinese have signed Charter 08 through Internet sites that disseminate the document.

That's not to say that the government hasn't become good at cracking down on things it doesn't like, and the article certainly notes just that the government is "losing," not that it has "lost." However, it also points out that rising voices of complaints are having an impact, noting how China's "Green Dam" plan to install internet filters on all PCs was eventually stopped due to public protest over the idea. So, yes, the government has continued to censor the internet in China, and many users have more trouble reaching certain sites or types of information, but that does not mean that internet censorship works or that it's been successful in suppressing opposition content and discussion online.