In his excellent 2014 book on China’s modern evolution, Age of Ambition, Evan Osnos optimistically observed that “the internet had long ago exceeded” what China’s censors could handle such that “words were being expressed first and censored second.” Put another way, technology is way too fast for those in the employ of government, and too leaky. Indeed, while official Chinese history doesn’t include the atrocities at Tiananmen Square, Osnos reports that anyone in China possessing reasonable facility with technology can read all about what truly happened in 1989.
Osnos’s memories of China have come to mind a lot as the ‘Twitter Files’ have revealed censorship at the social network about Hunter Biden’s laptop, along with censorship more broadly of commentary hostile to the lockdowns related to the coronavirus. About the latter, if readers can find an individual more hostile to the thoroughly mindless lockdowns than the person you’re reading now, I want to meet this person. With the possible exception of my good friend Jeffrey Tucker (Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, and organizer of essential Great Barrington Declaration), it would be very challenging to find anyone who has written more (including a book, When Politicians Panicked) than I have against governmental force that was so tragically anti-health, life, economy, and freedom.
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