China's internet censors not happy about UN's World Happiness Report

The United Nation’s recently-released World Happiness Report (PDF) listed China as the 112th happiest country out of 156 countries. A number of China-based news websites re-posted the report, the first of which was Xinhua.net.

The Ministry of Truth was not happy: publishing the report, or any references to it, is now banned in China.

More: China Digital Times (CDT). (via @rmack)

• [Mark Dow]

  :(

  • [Ant]

    ):

• [SoItBegins]

  Maybe it’s just me, but this bugs me at a certain level that previous talk about China has failed to do. We know China censors its Internet, but this just feels… wrong in some strange way.

  • [GEOFFREY WHITMAN]

    Maybe it’s that this issue speaks directly to the idea of personal, human happiness, while every other bit of censor-ish shenanigans have simply attacked those things that may (or may not) generate human happiness.  Makes it feel a bit evil-er.  And yes, I do love grammar, despite how I treat it.

• [MrWoods]

  Wait, does China actually call it Minitrue or is that crimespeak on your part?

  • [sincarne]

    It’s actually called the State Council Information Office. The Chinese apparently call it Ministry of Truth as a joke, though.

• [Chuck]

  “China deemed happy due to retroactive lack of allegations to the contrary.”

• [RJ]

  Well of course they want to keep it quiet. The government and the upper class are parasites, feeding on the cheap labor provided by China’s most productive people. If those people were allowed to see where they stand in relation to the rest of the world, you can bet your ass the labor movement would grow into a monster overnight. The parasites have to look out for themselves, you know.

  • [tsol]

    China’s “government and the upper class” ARE, or were, a “labor movement”! You know, dictatorship of the proletariat and all that. It’s almost like human nature defies social engineering or something…

    • [Rezeya Montecore]

      You think corporations and governments don’t successfully social-engineer their residents all the time?! For that matter, I don’t think the cooptation of popular movements is really a uniquely left-wing/socialist/labor-rights habit either, if that’s what you’re implying. 

      It’s not that human nature is totally immune to social engineering — if it were, we wouldn’t be able to have a civilization at all. It’s just, IMHO, that we don’t police that social engineering resolutely enough against bastards getting their hands on the controls. That’s how a labor movement can turn into a labor-oppressing government, a religion of peace can foster a ruthless theocracy, or a novel about agnostic individualism can inspire so much fairy-tale thinking about Invisible Hands.

      It’s got nothing to do with labor history; it’s pandemic, and its certainly not evidence that we shouldn’t have these movements or “social engineering” in the first place. It just means we have to lower our tolerance for ideologues and strong-arm tactics in general as a species. (Unfortunately, everyone seems to love their OWN bastards, left or right.) Not every means of social engineering requires Bolshevik levels of brute force; the insinuation that it does is one of the right-wing habits I find most irritating and disappointing.

      • [Kimmo]

         Word.

      • [Neal Matthews]

         What you very articulately describe above can be reduced to this: the primary pursuit of the powerful is to remain in power. It matters not in what domain the power is exercised. It is a basic characteristic of human nature.

  • [oasisob1]

     We ARE still talking about China, right?

• [Marc45]

  Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where something like this would make the Chinese government say “damn, we need to do better!”

• [howaboutthisdangit]

  The Chinese government will be happy to re-educate its citizens in the ways of happiness.  They will be happy whether they like it or not.

• [SomeGuyNamedMark]

  The beatings will continue until everyone says they are happy.

• [BBNinja]

  Ministry of Truth isn’t happy?  You see…this is why they’re 112th.  To be honest, they should be grateful for even that.

• [inkfumes]

  All mention of China banning or censoring the internet is now banned or censored on the internet.

• [awjt]

  They’re the fat kid who shows up at your birthday party, eats all your cake and ice cream, opens your presents for you and then complains about the prizes in the gift bag you gave him.

• [asmodeus82]

  Where in that report is a ranking of happiness in over 156 countries?
  I looked trying to find the happiness rankings but found not such list…
  I couldn’t find anything that explicitly stated china: 112.

  • [Dominikus]

    The link to the original United Nations report is in the China Digital Times article and here: http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf
    The country rankings are on pages 30 – 32.

• [cfuse]

  I’m pretty sure that watching China’s butthurt has helped my country rise in the rankings.

• [BombBlastLightingWaltz]

  Who is number 156? I got frazzled by the numerous charts provided

  • [chaoskittenii]

     Right at the bottom of the list, Togo. We’ve got to get some shopping malls and happy meals in there, stat. Half of Togo’s population are under the poverty line so they might not be able to afford anything, but the advertising should cheer them up a bit.

• [Kimmo]

  I’m having trouble getting my head around something.

  These happiness reports have been around a while, right? How is it that this idea alone hasn’t caused a monumental quantity of people to question the basis of their societies? Isn’t it common knowledge that there’s fuck-all correlation between economic performance and the reason we all get out of bed in the morning? There are people in dirt-poor slums who are some of the happiest people in the world. Why? They enjoy membership in a functioning. local. community.

  Why do any of us, let alone nearly all of us, give a flying fuck about the insane machinations of inherently worthless tokens in a racket owned and operated by our oppressors? We’re divided, conquered, commodified and brainwashed to imagine anything else is unthinkable. But the truth is staring every one of us in the face: we’re raping, poisoning, and just plain destroying just about everything of lasting value in order to churn out mountains of worthless trinkets and baubles designed to distract us from the fact that we’re enslaved.

  When the hell are more people going to agree with me when I say, fuck this ersatz reality? Are some folks just simply incapable of taking the red pill, or what?

  The herd is already spilling over the fucking cliff, and yet my neighbours still vie and strive for gold stars from their shepherds.

  Seems to me the single biggest problem with humanity is all those belief systems which encourage subservience…

  Legitimate authority is a fucking oxymoron.

• [Ryan Lenethen]

  Their “people” are so happy they regularly set themselves on fire. Workers are so happy that they threaten to kill themselves unless conditions improve…