"The Great Firewall"

Naomi Klein's book, "No Logo" was refreshing, clear and a studied indictment of globalisation and its consequences. It was a book, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading even if, at times, it was a little overloaded with truisms. It is, therefore, with dismay that I read her recent article, "in the wake of catastrophe comes a whiff of unrest", in 'the Guardian' from 16th May. One wonders what kind of journalistic research is done for articles such as this.
One of the things that annoys me about living in China is that my internet connection might not open a page or that opening that page might take a bit longer than usual. However, as Naomi rightly indicates, there is invariably a way round this and sometimes even a simple proxy might work. The notorious "great firewall" is, indeed, failing and blogs are going wild but to assume that this represents a real threat to the establishment in China is to demonstrate a fundamental lack of knowledge not only of this country but of the world at large. The girl sitting opposite me in 'Costa Coffee' might also be accessing Naomi's article but it is very unlikely that she is. Indeed, it is unlikely that she would want to access anything that might be even slightly contentious and the same would hold true for the vast majority of the burgeoning middle class in China. Moreover, most Chinese do not even possess the knowledge or the tools to access this information.
The establishment in China has, in my opinion, already moved to a new level in maintaining control. They have already accepted that they can no longer completely monopolise information. Nevertheless, in doing so they possibly also realise that this is no longer necessary. In the West the lies, lies and lies of our governments along with the disseminating of misinformation by the mainstream media in support of entrenched political and big business interests can provide a model. A model which can comfortably co-exist with http://democracynow.org and other voices of dissent. Of course, should any investigative journalism, nevertheless, lead to real transparency and with that threaten certain vested interests there is always the Russian model to look at.