Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Wikipedia Wars

China and Japan's Wikipedia War -- Pete Hunt, Foreign Policy

How a showdown over a group of remote islands in the East China Sea is heating up online.

As China and Japan jockey for influence in the Pacific, an unlikely diplomatic fault line has emerged: an archipelago of uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea. Known as the Senkakus in Japan, which controls them, the islands are also claimed by China and Taiwan -- and both are struggling to reassert sovereignty. Tremors have increased in recent months with confrontations between the Japanese and Taiwanese coast guards and rabble-rousing from Chinese media outlets. Statesman have shuffled back and forth between Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington to cool the crisis, but neither Xi Jinping, the new head of the Chinese Communist Party, nor Shinzo Abe, Japan's new prime minister, show any sign of backing down. On the contrary, China raised the stakes on Jan. 30, when one of its military frigates aimed weapons-targeting radar at a Japanese warship, prompting Japan to lodge a formal complaint with the Chinese government.

Read more ....

My Comment: This is one reason why Wikipedia should always be used as one of only many reference tools. But the fight and dispute between editors on Wikipedia .... and the web traffic that follows it .... provides a revealing insight on how important the web has become in the information and propaganda wars.

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