China has spent a great deal of time being portrayed as an oppressive force when it comes to information traveling into and out of the country. Talk of Internet censorship began to grab some steam in 2007, and the Communist Party hasn’t escaped that label since. Yet it’s critical for outside observers to take a few steps back from the day-to-day news cycle in order to get a more comprehensive view of where it’s been and where it may go in the months and years ahead. Here we give you one such timeline.

If we’ve managed to miss any items from recent past, share your picks in the comments!

Size Matters

As we can all now appreciate, portions of China’s populace have familiarized themselves with the Internet to varying degrees over the last several years. Still, there is a real big limit to their digital freedoms. It’s called the Great Firewall.

So it’s important to understand where the government wants to carry the country to recognize that opening is happening and will continue to happen in the years ahead. It’s important to recognize the financial highlights made in the press over past few years for what they are. Seven-, eight-, and nine-figure funding deals, along with talk of IPOs, has been consistent. This year’s news of gaming venture 9you is just one example. I gather from these events that commerce has become the dominant religion of the red jungle. Which means great things for the country as a whole.

Harsh Treatment

Of course, the road for people in China fortunate enough to experience the Web has been a rough one. Not too long ago it was a weekly practice for bloggers beyond the country’s borders to make note of banned websites and censorship and, in some cases, arrests.

Remember when Yahoo and Microsoft spoke openly of their compliance with the Chinese government’s pursuit of censorship?

Yahoo’s CEO was later forced to endure congressional questioning in the US as a result of its release of user information to Chinese authorities that led to the arrest of Shi Tao, a journalist in the country.

Suffice it to say that Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google eventually came to learn that such behavior wouldn’t be accepted by American regulators as “the way things must go in the world of international business,” and agreed last month to guidelines for managing ventures in places suspect of human rights abuses.

Amplified Concerns

Forward to 2008, when we’ve seen many multinational corporations endure conflicts with China’s network of regulators. At the start of the year, Google saw YouTube blocked for hosting material having to do with protests in Tibet. CNN was later blocked for toeing a “China-no-good” line (our phrasing, not CNN’s) leading up to the Olympics.

As noise on the matter increased, Western press outfits en masse began to question the Chinese government on the topic of Web access during the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. Weeks of lingering coverage poured fourth in the springtime and early- to mid-summer.

The Olympic Games Begin to Turn the Tide

But while it made news prior to the games’ commencement, once things really began and progressed through 3 weeks of athletic records broken and, followed by a closing ceremony as spectacular as the one which started the whole thing, few news outlets based outside the Chinese mainland managed to revisit the subject of access. Or if they did, it was not to dwell on the present and the immediate past, but to hypothesize on what China would become in subsequent seasons. The pomp certainly won out over the circumstance in the Chinese capital.

That meant good news for China. Great news, in fact. The entire spectacle was a resounding success. Commentators started to believe that changes for the better would be made as a result of the games. But it was not the only advantage gained by the nation, and more specifically, the people.

The Crisis in Sichuan Province

Before the games had begun, there was the crisis inflicted by the earthquake in Sichuan Province, which wrought massive amounts of damage to infrastructure and claimed tens of thousands of lives, many of them young of age.

The sheer enormity of the event drove the Chinese government to allow for conversation about crisis to flow largely without limits on the Web. That went as much for emergency response as conversation on the how and why for the damage dealt. Local officials were blamed severely for aiding in the propagation of poor construction practices.

Thus, the question for the Chinese people and the world beyond to then consider became one of the possibility of permanent openness. Given the fact that rebuilding will take a great deal of time to fully accomplish, one can hope there is some enduring benefit to be had from the disaster, however unfortunate it was to so many citizens.

Big Change Comes Slowly

Let’s stress China’s desire to adjust at its own pace. Since things quieted down from a height of intense awareness of limits in the middle of the year, other negatives have come to the fore, not including the matter of tainted baby food. Recent reports of hacks performed via China on the White House network, for instance, while not unprecedented, have raised numerous red flags in Washington as well as the cyber division of the US Air Force Space Command (formerly known as AFCYBER), among other departments

Yes, China’s movements in the tech space are rough, sporadic, and in many ways slow-going. But there’s reason to establish an optimistic view of the future. That’s because the way the ruling party has conducted itself as of late has become very, very market oriented. It may be a heavily controlled market, but growth behooves the controller to loosen its grip to allow for continued expansion.

International commerce is what has led China to grow by enormous bounds for the last several seasons, and it is what makes Chinese society and the government’s interaction with the rest of the world considerably more transparent and open to exploration by outsiders. That goes as much for news as entertainment, too. Just look at MySpace and Facebook’s recent dealings with the Chinese market and the competition they’ve encountered there in sites like Xiaonei, Xiaoyou.

Realistically speaking, China won’t emulate the West anytime soon. It may never go so far, in fact. But it will come considerably closer to a progressive cohesiveness as we travel into the next decade. There’s simply too much money on the table not to make that effort.

Imagery provided by iStockPhoto/bkindler

; China BackPacker

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yahoo China Launches a MySpace CloneIn China, MySpace and MSN Make Unlikely FriendsiPhone Coming to China Mobile?MySpace China Creating an Instant Messenger ServiceMySpace China Next Week - How Much Censorship?Yahoo Goes to China; Takes 10 Percent Stake in Alibaba.comMySpace.cn is Live

Over the last year or so, I’ve been following the horrible inconsistencies in the enforcement of Google’s various TOS policies. The Inquisitr touched on one earlier today when they reported on Google’s collusion with Indian authorities on the creation of their Orkut censorship policy. Everyone who’s ever put together a weekend project that turned into something with a community or a userbase knows that the terms of service is probably the most ridiculously boring part of the work, and is always going to end up being the source of a headache down the line.

When you’re a multi-billion dollar company like Google, though, it’s incumbant upon you to put a bit of thought as to what your general moral and ethical stance is going to be, and how you’re going to handle the tangled web of international regulation.

Why should Google be held to a higher standard than the rest of the sea of startups? Because as goes Google, so go we all. I touched on this in what is the epitome of what I’m talking about in an article did earlier this month. The article chronicled the bookend to what has been Google and YouTube’s support of middle eastern terrorists‘ right to broadcast on YouTube in response to pressure applied by US Senator Joe Lieberman. 

Essentially, the move was a right one because it deftly avoided the creation of highly restrictive legislation in the United States that would have undoubtedly lead to undesirable unintended consequences. As I pointed out then, though, Google has a history of playing chicken with the law as an alternative to coming up with a coherent moral code:

Generally, the only thing that seems to influence Google to do the right thing in the past has been a combination of media and government pressure. The most prime example of this which springs to mind is the case of Orkut and the literal infiltration of pedophiles onto the system. The story stayed on our radar for quite some time, starting with reports in January of 2007 as noted by Pete, the problem continuing to grow on into September when Google decided to do something about policing their community.

Google continued to protect the identities of pedophiles from Brazilian authorities for months, as noted by Sean in October and myself in April of this year. Finally, in late April, Google finally caved to widespread media criticism and governmental authority and began cooperating with police in turning over the identities of those trafficking in pictures and video of under-aged sex acts.

Similarly, the moral and ethical inconsistencies Google’s exhibited with YouTube have been well documented here at this blog. Aside from the terrorists (who up to a few weeks ago remained uncensored while their detractors were routinely silenced):

Handsome Hong Kong Guy Censored for showing videos of clothed local females with derogatory towards women music in the background.

This Pornography Advertisement Uncensored. It doesn’t show actual full nudity or sex acts, but you definitely get the idea.

A Breast-Feeding Mother Censored over obscenity claims.

This Strip Tease Censored. A small area over the genitals remains covered for the duration of the minute and a half long strip tease. This video was removed the day after our editorial went live on the site. There are still hundreds more like it on the site, however.

An Egyptian Fellow Censored (then uncensored) for showing video evidence of local police brutality.

This GTA IV Ad Uncensored, despite depicting a police officer firing a gun into a crowd of civilians.

What’s going on now is that instead of working to come up with a cohesive company-wide policy or ethos, they’re playing to the law, which is certain to lead to only more pitfalls and unintended consequences down the line. Duncan documents the program they’ve created to keep their Googley butts out of Indian courts:

Google’s activities in India previously drew international headlines when Google provided local police information leading to the arrest of Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid for posting to an Orkut group named “I hate Sonia Ghandi.”

The new initiative sees Google training “cyber police” in most “tier 1 and 2″ cities in India, and offering police a “priority reporting tool” that sees any objectionable content flagged by police being reviewed faster than standard objection flags.

The elephant in the room is the fact that all of this comes from a company who’s motto is supposedly “Don’t Be Evil.” It seems to have metamorphosed into “Let’s Not Get Fined, Raided or Shut Down.” I’m all for protecting your business interests, but Google is operating from an unprecedented position of power, and like that child deity from Classic Star Trek, they don’t know how to properly weild that power yet.

We’re watching, though, Google. We all want to love you whole-heartedly, but when you do stuff like this, you make us worry that you’re traveling down a dark path. You’ve built up an incredible trust with your users over the years. We implore you: don’t destroy that trust.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:AT&T Changing its Questionable ToSGoogle Denies Ownership of Your Docs & Spreadsheets ContentGoogle Trends Now Updates DailydeliGoo: Custom Google Search for del.icio.usGoogle Blog Search Semi-Launched in ChinaGoogle Answers to Make Triumphant Return?Google To Launch Google Wiki

The decision by the Australian government to institute filtering of the Internet at the ISP level to protect children from pornography and violent websites is being received with anger and comparisons to the Great Firewall of China. Of course, these critics are ignoring reality.

For starters, anyone can opt out of the filtering, which is simliar to what numerous European countries have mandated for years. Moreover, many ISPS already screen content. Why is this kicking up a fuss? Because of three predictable truths: Governments love to play nanny, Web-filtering software makers love to ring up sales, and bloggers love to bloviate about “freedom.” (Photo by Saad)