This long article is a good primer on the state of media censorship in the PRC.

China’s continuous media censorship and a recent apparent upgrade of controls have led to widespread condemnation from media organizations around the world.

There have been a number of recent announcements calling for boycotts and protests against China’s censorship combined with condemnation of western firms that cooperate with the Chinese government. The UK’s National Union of Journalists has called for a boycott of Yahoo.com’s products and services, following the company’s cooperation with Chinese authorities on the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

The NUJ’s 40,000 members have been using Yahoo for mailing lists and the union decided that because Yahoo was handing over information leading to the arrest and prosecution of journalists, they would boycott the company…

According the NUJ’s release, besides Shi Tao, several other Chinese journalists have been arrested after Yahoo provided information to authorities to help identify dissidents. Jiang Lijun was sentenced to four years in November 2003 after Yahoo provided information that helped identify him. He was sentenced for writing articles that called the Chinese government “autocratic” and said that he favored a western-style democracy, the NUJ said. Another Chinese citizen Li Zhi was sentenced to eight years for discussing pro-democracy issues in a web forum and for emailing pro-democracy campaigners, according to the NUJ.

The most frequently heard response – and one that, ironically, was repeated by Hao Wu himself, who is mentioned in the article – is that it’s mainly outsiders who care about the censorship, and most Chinese couldn’t care less. True, just as most people everywhere don’t really care about much else than their own needs and wants. And censorship is relatively low on most Chinese citizens’ Needs & Wants List. For most Westerners, on the other hand, who were raised from day one believing freedom of speech is just about our most important guaranteed right, the reaction to censorship is predictably more extreme and indignant. But I’ve seen plenty of evidence that plenty of people in China do care about the censorship, many caring about it enough to risk going to prison. (Just today, a reader in China spoke out about this subjecton this site.) I agree with Hao Wu’s key point that ultimately it’s the Chinese who will have to work this issue out, but I also think it’s healthy for the Western media to “go ga-ga” over the issue, just as they have “gone ga-ga” over Hao Wu’s own imprisonment. The world has to know this kind of thing is happening in China if people are to understand what China really is. (At the same time we have to understand that this is not the only thing China is about, and that there have been some incredible changes and improvements there, as this blog often strives to point out. There are no simple explanations for what China is or what it stands for.)

Link via CDT.

Update: Looking back at the rambling nature of that final long paragraph, I offer you all my heartfelt apologies.