"Of the ten conflicts in human history with the highest death tolls, five were civil wars in China.

Chief among these was the Three Kingdoms War when up to 40 million are reckoned to have perished in military operations and from the destructive consequences of warfare. This is an enormous number, considering that the global population at that time is unlikely to have exceeded 400 million. More recently, the Taiping Rebellion claimed more than 20 million lives while the civil war that brought the Communist Party to power resulted in 7.5 million deaths, over and above the 20 million estimated to have been killed in the roughly contemporary Japanese invasion.

This is not the history we were taught at school but Chinese leaders are well aware of these facts.

When disorder breaks out in China, things turn very nasty indeed.

It is best, therefore, to avoid disorder at almost any cost."

That is why.

Or would you prefer to have China descend into the chaos of Rwanda or Sudan ?

Wait, I may be misunderstanding your comment, but are you saying you support censorship by the Chinese government on the basis of some paternalistic "those dang Chinese can't handle themselves and start a-killin' if they get to know too much, so it's better to keep them in the dark"?

Also, when quoting large blocks of text it is usually helpful to source that quote.

Oppression causes civil wars.

If they are using oppression to avoid disorder, they better have long term plan. Otherwise they are digging their own grave.

Not many people fear of chaos in the USA and not because they have the best firewall.

Millions of doomsday preppers may disagree.

> Millions

There are not millions of doomsday preppers in the US. And their obsession is not representative of public will or sentiment.

The comment you're replying to said: >Not many people fear of chaos in the USA and not because they have the best firewall

So you seem to be saying that if the US had a Great Firewall the nutjobs who spend half their salary on underground bunkers and armament wouldn't. That's a pretty silly argument.

Well, thousands anyway.

Historically, I believe it would be much more accurate to say that opportunity creates civil wars. People start wars because they think they can win.

Incidentally, in most of those Chinese conflicts (4 out of 5 I believe), they were right. Many other wars were similar : starts with "immigration", numbers increasing, conflict, open conflict (and mass death), repression (of the losing side). Extermination is often tried but rarely succeeds. Well it succeeds in causing mass death, but it doesn't succeed in the sense that extermination is the result.

Good statement so far. But wait... do you assume that censorship could cause another civil war or could avoid another civil war? And where is your reasoning or evidence?

It doesn't take much to motivate someone to do it. A paycheck is enough 99.99% of the time.

They probably appreciate having their family alive...or something. It'd be better if our colleagues who don't have their hands and relatives tied to create and proliferate liberating software.

Are you saying that Blue Coat (based in Sunnyvale, California) develops censorship tools in order to keep their family alive? Who is threatening them?