5.3.2. Censorship makes countries poorer (审查使国家更穷)
Dictatorships need Censorship (审查) to survive, and they must control all information to make themselves always look good: Would ending the Great Firewall truly end the dictatorship? (结束防火墙真的会结束独裁吗？).
As a result, knowledge of problems flows more slowly, and therefore they also take longer to solve.
Maybe this hurts the argument, but Hillary agrees: :-)
But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccGzOJHE1rw&t=2110 "Secretary Clinton Speaks on Internet Freedom", U.S. Department of State, 2010-01-22
Also mentioned at: Google versus China - VPRO documentary - 2011
This is also the basis of a Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击).
This suggestion is even more explicit in the fictional World War Z 2006 novel by Max Brooks about a virus outbreak in China. It was later adapted into the World War Z (2013) movie by Paramount:
-
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jun/04/brad-pitt-china-world-war-z: Paramount cowards tried to kowtow and remove references to China from the movie, but it failed
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/china-barred-my-dystopian-novel-about-how-its-system-enables-epidemics/2020/02/27/cc0446f0-58e5-11ea-9000-f3cffee23036_story.html: no Chinese publisher dared publish the book unless China references were removed, which the author declined, and so the book was not published in China
Or if you prefer:
The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
Amartya Sen is another famous proponent of similar arguments in the area of hungers: https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44284.html (archive)
In democratic countries, even very poor ones, the survival of the ruling government would be threatened by famine, since elections are not easy to win after famines; nor is it easy to withstand criticism of opposition parties and newspapers. That is why famine does not occur in democratic countries. Unfortunately, there are a great many countries in the world which do not yet have democratic systems.
although like any other political argument, some disagree.
Virus outbreaks and other natural disasters also illustrate this well: Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查).
Bibliography:
-
https://www.uow.edu.au/the-stand/2019/chernobyl-a-lesson-in-truth.php Chernobyl: a lesson in truth Secrets were kept, mistakes were made, and people were exposed
Dictatorships need Censorship (审查) to survive, and they must control all information to make themselves always look good: Would ending the Great Firewall truly end the dictatorship? (结束防火墙真的会结束独裁吗？).
As a result, knowledge of problems flows more slowly, and therefore they also take longer to solve.
Maybe this hurts the argument, but Hillary agrees: :-)
But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century
Also mentioned at: Google versus China - VPRO documentary - 2011
This is also the basis of a Screen name keyword attack (网名审查关键字攻击).
This suggestion is even more explicit in the fictional World War Z 2006 novel by Max Brooks about a virus outbreak in China. It was later adapted into the World War Z (2013) movie by Paramount:
-
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jun/04/brad-pitt-china-world-war-z: Paramount cowards tried to kowtow and remove references to China from the movie, but it failed
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/china-barred-my-dystopian-novel-about-how-its-system-enables-epidemics/2020/02/27/cc0446f0-58e5-11ea-9000-f3cffee23036_story.html: no Chinese publisher dared publish the book unless China references were removed, which the author declined, and so the book was not published in China
Or if you prefer:
The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
Amartya Sen is another famous proponent of similar arguments in the area of hungers: https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44284.html (archive)
In democratic countries, even very poor ones, the survival of the ruling government would be threatened by famine, since elections are not easy to win after famines; nor is it easy to withstand criticism of opposition parties and newspapers. That is why famine does not occur in democratic countries. Unfortunately, there are a great many countries in the world which do not yet have democratic systems.
although like any other political argument, some disagree.
Virus outbreaks and other natural disasters also illustrate this well: Censorship of the 2019 Corona Virus (2019冠状病毒病早期迹象审查).
Bibliography:
-
https://www.uow.edu.au/the-stand/2019/chernobyl-a-lesson-in-truth.php Chernobyl: a lesson in truth Secrets were kept, mistakes were made, and people were exposed