This video was very interesting, it was hard to catch a lot of the names and stuff in the video though so it is hard to speak greatly on it. One thing that just really stuck out to me about this video though, is that from what I have read the Chinese people have generally just tried to erase the Tiananmen Square incident from history and it is not something that people want to talk about, or that you will even really stumble across in history books. I am strong believer that learning about historical events such as this is important, so that it does not happen again and we can learn form the past. As embarrassed as China is about the event, they basically  let it happen again identically in this latest Student organized uprising. I do not know why that particular aspect of the video stood out to me, but it did. It kind of just seems China appears to be taking a lot of steps backwards when it comes to social and political aspects of society. Again, this could just be from an outsider perspective though.

My first thought about this article is that I am glad Deng Yujiao was saved by the internet, because had they convicted her of murder it would have provided more evidence to my scrapbook of how China is corrupt. The crazy thing about this article is that wrongful convictions and situations such as these occur in the U.S. all the time. The only difference is I think the court and legal/justice system is more stable. I do not think media too often plays a “fairness” role in a trial. I do not think our legal system is perfect, but when I think of this alternate and the fact that the media is a check and balance to the Chinese legal system seems quite odd. However, this article argues that  this is not odd, but the evolution of “competitive supervision”. It says that the court and media interaction is actually strengthening the the party-state by increasing responsiveness and accountability without deeper political reforms – called horizontal accountability. I think that I agree with this statement, China is better off for this relationship. The government, still fighting corruption, is trying to do better, but corruption still finds its way in. The media publicly displaying this corruption and putting the government on display  is probably the perfect way for the government to change. Especially with the internet now, it is a game changer. Like stated in the case about Sun Zhigang in 2003 the government was going to try and ban the media display of the case, but because it was put on multiple websites on the internet it was too late by the time they got to it, so it could  not be erased. It was the people’s discontent with the appellate’s court decision that got the Supreme People’s Court to intervene in the case and the proper punishment to be rendered.

This concept is very interesting considering we are on the opposite spectrum in the U.S. During a trial the media should not have too many details about a case, jury members should not be watching news about a case, and the media plays very little role in the actual legal part of a case. This is in order to protect rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Although the system might not always be just and fair the U.S. judicial system seems like it is a good one to me. However, in China I am 100% on board with the Competitive Supervision because I think it keeps the Courts more honest and fair.

This article breaks up political trust into two cognitively distinct, but related categories: competence versus intention evaluations. This was tested using valid methods and the empirical evidence showed that (1) the surveyed Chinese  urban residents effectively differentiated between their central government’s competence to deliver good governance; (2) the Chinese urbanites did consult different sources of information and heuristics when evaluating their government’s competence and intention, respectively. I think this article is kind of hard to follow, but basically the article starts off by saying  it  is hard to be able  to truly measure  trust, competence, and intentions. It establishes that although it might be hard to define and research these, what has almost been found certain is that these two traits are very different. You can be competent and not have ill intentions, just the as you be incompetent, but have good intentions. In order for people to trust their government there must be a certain level of confidence that their government is competent and has good intentions. People’s opinions of their government’s competence is best measured by evaluating the performance of the policy output. Also, people’e opinion of their governments intentions are best measured by evaluating  information like political scandals and corruption that falls  outside the normal values for corruption and scandal in a government.

In China’s case despite the authoritarian nature the Chinese government has been widely trusted by its people. Scholars have not  been able to pin point an exact reason for why the trust is so high, but just attributes it to a multitude if things. I tried to put myself in the shoes of the Chinese people, which is hard. From the outside looking in it does not appear that China has a working and thriving government, and it seems like there is a lot  of  political unrest. However, for the Chinese people who have not had a stable and thriving government for 60 years I guess it is just normal. The government appears to be doing stable. The CCP  and government continues to make reforms every once in a while to make  it appear as though it is working to make  improvements and to keep the CCP in power and this give off the impression of competence. I do not think that the Chinese government  has bad intentions I believe they believe that they are doing the best thing for China and the Chinese people. So I guess if I lived  in China I might have a high trust in our government, but the United State’s system being so different it is really  hard to stay objective and see China’s government in a high light.

My first thoughts on this article are: this has to be a joke. I understand two explosions took place in Tianjin and the G20 summit was being highly censored, but you have to think if the first lady Peng Liyuan’s blurbs about fashion could not even make the media and were being censored, that no media, news, or events were being published at all. This connects to what I was discussing earlier with the “keywords search”, by making keywords so general as; “summit”, “country”, “airport”, and “Hangzhou” you are not allowing for anything to pass through the censor. This makes me question the collective action theory. What about  the first lady’s fashion has anything to do with collective action, or critiquing the state for that matter of fact confuses me. So this tells me the government is not doing a good job processing the censorship program and it is looking  to do more then just prevent collective action. I do believe that this is a very serious problem. As times goes on the amount being censored seems to be increasing which is only repressing the Chinese people more. I do not know if China is looking  to head in a direction of democracy, or if Democracy would even be the best thing for China, but this is moving in the opposite direction of democracy and I feel like any direction that China would actually want to go.

This article was extremely interesting, I feel like I say that often when it comes to these readings, but every article brings something new to the table, or a different perspective. What I found most interesting about this piece is that I really did not agree with it at all. The assertion this article makes is that contrary to many other people’s research and commentary, the purpose of the censorship program is not to suppress the criticism of the state or the Communist Party. The purpose of the censorship program is actually to reduce the probability of collective action by clipping social ties whenever any collective movements are in evidence or expected. My feelings about this statement in itself is that don’t the two often go hand in hand. Someone who is criticizing the state or Communist Party is more then likely the same someone’s who would be looking to start a collective movement.

In the beginning it acknowledges that it is hard to distinguish between the state critique model and the collective action model, but it clearly states it believes the collective action model is accurate and then tries to back it up with a lot  of evidence. It claims”The Great Wall of China” mainly effects foreigners and those that interact with foreigners, but otherwise it does not  really affect  the Chinese people, but I feel like this is being underplayed a lot. I feel that the government and  Communist Party does not want the Chinese to be using anything that they cannot completely control. Then they say “keyword blocking” only has a limited effect on freedom of speech. However, I do not understand how a government prevent news, media, text messages, E-mails, or anything that it chooses not to send to be considered limited. Yes you can come up with codes for the censored words and such, but it seems that this form of censorship is a huge violation of freedom of speech. The study that they did on the censoring of websites and information in times of a crisis, it basically seems like they would  over censor because they wanted to make sure they covered all areas of the varieties of different manners of spreading information. I understand that back in the day the U.S. would do this during times of war as to make sure everyone was on board or it was not publicly displayed that the U.S. did not all agree on war time efforts, however, this level  of censorship and limiting of speech I do not think would ever take place in this day and age. Especially, when the government is censoring information just to make sure they are not looked at badly. When an event takes place in China today especially, regarding collective action, you can almost guarantee that majority of people’s information is being blocked. The article provides evidence of times that writers and bloggers did Critique the government and  get away with it, but I feel like these few examples do not convince me. Also, I could  be wrong, but with Xi Jinping as president the censors on the critique of government have increased.

Anyways, this article makes for a good argument and it has a lot of facts and evidence to support its hypothesis, but for some reason I just feel like its biased and I do not want to trust it. The weirdest part is that I do not even necessarily disagree with the article, because I do think that one of China’s main goals  is probably to prevent collective action movements.