Chinese Official Dares to Challenge Repressive Government Internet Censorship – Heat Street

A senior Chinese official has spoken out against his countrys repressive internet censorship measures in a rare show of defiance.

Luo Fuhe, a technology adviser to Chinas parliament, said that Communist officials should un-ban some of the thousands of websites currently blocked by the so-called Great Firewall.

Web censorship has become more severe in the years since Xi Jinping became president, with hundreds of news sites blocked, as well as most social networks.

But Luo spoke out against Chinas determination to control its peoples internet access over the weekend, saying that academic sites should be removed from the filter.

He said continued censorship will have a grave impact on our countrys socio-economic development and scientific research, theSouth China Morning Postreported.

He cited examples of state filtering software slowing the internet down to an unusable pace.

Pages hosted by the UN could take 20 seconds to load, while sites hosted by foreign universities are so heavily vetted they can take more than half an hour, he warned.

Luo belongs to one of Chinas non-Communist political parties, and works for theChinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, which advises their parliament.

His criticism is exceptionally outspoken given the commitment of the Communist party, which dominates Chinas political culture, to the policy.

Notably, Luo stuck to uncontroversial academic examples and the economic costs of web censorship, rather than focusing on personal freedom.

He left out the social penalty suffered by the Chinese people, unable to access huge chunks of the internet which are freely available in the West.

The repressive outlook earned China the worst score in the world in a recent ranking of government internet policies by the Freedom House watchdog organization.

But is unlikely to be taken on board by leading figures of the Chinese politburo, who are headed in the opposite direction.

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Chinese Official Dares to Challenge Repressive Government Internet Censorship - Heat Street