How the Chinese Government Controls Television
....
The CCTV building in Beijing is guarded like a military base, its only two
entrances manned by armed military personnel. As usual, the audience for the
show had to line up at the west gate of the station, and be escorted into
the main building through another checkpoint at the door.
....
The first audience for this TV show would be the censors and Party officials
who ensure appropriate media content. And these functionaries had a direct
line to the people in power who could directly affect our lives. This was
enough to create a chilling effect on all of us. No direct threats were
necessary; only the vague but real chance of some kind of reprisal.
....
We foreigners were not the audience that day. Rather, we were merely bit
players in an Orwellian TV drama, whose laudatory theme and plot had very
little to do with reality.
....
“Censorship” became construed as “effective communication”; “informed
criticism” was redefined as “ignorance”; and the message “Give us your
advice” morphed into “Give us your silence.” We all heard the message and
obeyed.
....
As with the rest of the world, government control of information, to be
truly effective, must now be carried out by distraction and misdirection of
attention spans away from the offending issues. The Party is catching on to
this fact. In 1989, nobody in China knew who Wei Jingsheng was because the
government could erase him from the Chinese information environment. Today
nobody knows who Wei Jingsheng is because Britney Spears is so cute and
fascinating.

The anaconda may just be one stage in the evolution toward a much more
terrifying beast.
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Full story http://www.danwei.org/archives/001505.html