Coincidence - I think not! ala 1984

I have always known that we are now living in a Communist country and that freedom of speech was sorely lacking here. They tell us the city is safe, only petty crime - we know better in a city of 22 million. However, in all honesty, we don't worry about it daily because capitalism seems like it is in full swing in Shanghai.

In the last week however, we have noticed a little more control from China over our internet and news. Last week our VOIP (Vonage) phone went out. We thought it was our hardware, but we also checked with another couple here and their phone is mysteriously out as well. Will did some research and well, the tech support people are working on it, whatever, "IT" is.

Then today as I"m laying on my sick bed with my second sinus infection in 6 weeks (thank you air pollution in Shanghai), I"m watching our only station - CNN - that broadcasts in China. The anchor went from one story - Bush in Asia - to just starting to talk about a story re: Tibet. The screen went blank for about 10 seconds then went on with the broadcast. The first time I thought hmmm, that's interesting, put my conspiracy theories aside and moved on and....took another nap. Randomly I turned the TV back on and it was cycling through the same stories. AGAIN, as soon as the anchor said Tibet, the screen went blank! This is on CNN!! Hello - I get CNN censored?? I can't even find the newstory on their online website. The only link talking somewhat poorly about China was the one I added above - that Wikipedia is blocked again in China. Good article and just plain disturbing. I'm so naive.

It will be interesting to watch to see if this improves, etc in the next few years, but in the meantime we hope that we get our VOIP phone back from the abyss.