I think this is pretty predictable. There was an opinion piece by a Fellow at the Open Society Institute in the WSJ yesterday that explained this mindset. The entire piece is worth a read, but here are the two relevant excerpts:<p>"One night in the mid-1990s when I was working as a journalist in Beijing, I went out to dinner with some Chinese friends. I had just finished reading a book called "The File" by the British historian Timothy Garton Ash. It's about what happened in East Berlin after the Berlin Wall came down and everybody could see the files the Stasi had been keeping all those years. People discovered who had been ratting on whom-in some cases neighbors and co-workers, but also lovers, spouses and even children. After I described the book to my Chinese dinner companions-a hip and artsy intellectual crowd-one friend declared: "Some day the same thing will happen in China, then I'll know who my real friends are."<p>The table went silent.<p>...<p>I do believe, however, that in my lifetime the Chinese people may learn more about some of the conversations that have taken place over the past decade between Internet company executives and Chinese authorities. When that happens, they will know who sold them out and who was most eager to help the Chinese Communist Party in building a blinkered cocoon of disinformation around their lives-and in some cases deaths.<p>This censored environment makes it easier for the Chinese government to lie to its people, steal from them, turn a blind eye when they are poisoned with tainted foodstuffs, and cover up their children's deaths due to substandard building codes. It is a constant struggle, and sometimes literally a crime, for people to share information about such matters or to use the Internet to mobilize against corruption and malfeasance.<p>That is the information environment that China's business elites, many of whom have gotten rich running Internet and telecommunications companies, are responsible for helping to build and maintain. For now they are national heroes, having made great (and lucrative) efforts on behalf of China's economic growth and global competitiveness, making China a force to be reckoned with on the global stage. But if history takes some unexpected turns-and that's the one thing you can count on Chinese history doing-it won't always be on their side."<p>Source: <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704362004575000442815795122.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870436200457500...</a>