by minimus 30 Replies latest social entertainment
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................ .....WatchTower News..
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First we taught the Chinese how to make Chow Mein..
.....Now we Fixed their Computer Wheelie Thing......................
........................How Cool is That?!.........................................
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...........The WBT$ Invented Chow Mein?!!..
.........How come Nobody tells Me Anything!!..
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............................................................................. 
...OUTLAW
Like most of the JW urban legend stories , there is probably a grain of truth somewhere in there ( Man Roland Presses went into liquidation and were bought out in 2012 - http://www.manroland-web.com/EN/company/Pages/history.aspx ) but as usual it has been hyped out of all proportion.
The implication in the email that someone ( presumably God or Jesus or maybe an angel ) "broke" the Chinese printing press uses the same reasoning that the Governing Body used in the AGM that God had somehow changed the weather in the New York area to facilitate the printing of more bibles. It just seems absurd to me and begs the question that if God is happy to break printing presses or alter weather patterns in the USA to fulfill his purposes , why didn't he ( for example ) prevent the lorry crash in Nigeria that killed over 20 JWs going to an assembly.
What is that newsletter? What morons.
I got this from a Jw friend, "It seems that there was never a ban on jw.org in China, and a brother in the Japanese branch who works in the factory said he had not heard about anyone going to China to fix their printing press. Looks like we were the victims of a hoax which our Japanese friend in New York had swallowed hook, line and sinker. Sorry about that." "Lots of love, Leon"
^seems like another lie, Jake! It appears it always was, and still is, banned.
And now here's something kind of cool:
Testresults for jehovahs-witness.net
Testresults for jehovahs-witness.net | |
| Beijing | ok |
| Shenzen | ok |
| Inner Mongolia | ok |
| Heilongjiang Province | ok |
| Yunnan Province | ok |
All servers were able to reach your site. This means that your site should be accessible from within mainland China.
We had Brother Petit give our talk today. He lives locally, but was a missionary in Japan for years and one of his sons still serves at Bethel. He told us an interesting experience/account that he just heard from his son. It was this: You know our new printing presses that print our magazines at that astronomical rate (like 200K an hour) and are at the Japan, Canada and German branches, well the Chinese government has one too. Theirs broke. They called the German company that made the press and found out that the company had gone out of business and couldn't provide any technical support. They suggested that the JWs in Japan had a printer and might be able to help. So, the Chinese government called the Branch in Japan and 3 brothers went to China to lend a hand. Of course, they knew what was wrong and fixed it. The Chinese government was so impressed and grateful they said they wanted to do something for the brothers. The brothers said they could legalize JW to organize freely in China . The Chinese government said, of course, that it couldn't do that because by law the heads of all national organizations had to be appointed by the communist party. BUT, they said, they would lift the ban on JW.org. WHAT?!?! Yes, now JW.ORG is legal in China . I instantly started crying and wanted to break
The story could make some sense to a point. What does not make sense to me, is that the witness refusal to serve in military forces would cause difficulty at some point. Several strands run together at this point. One strand is the traditional Chinese respect for learning, another is that as a transitioning economy a profession brings you more security in your life. The difference between what you can earn and the sort of life you can have as an unskilled person and someone with a profession gained from higher education is much more pronounced in China than in Australia or the US. But a third strand is that all first year university students must undergo compulsory military training.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2m5fXv_R-0#t=115
I suggest that at some point there will be conflict between witness doctrine and Chinese policy.
We can compare the situation to that in Singapore, where the witness literature is banned because of the military issue.
Those who are liable to serve national service but refuse are charged under the Enlistment Act. [11] If convicted, they face three years' imprisonment and a fine of S$10,000. Controversy arose when the penalties were increased in January 2006 after Melvyn Tan, who was born in Singapore, received a fine for defaulting on his National Service obligations. Tan left for London to study music during his enlistment age and later acquired British nationality. In parliament, Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean provided some illustration of the punishments defaulters would face: [12]
- Where the default period exceeds two years but the defaulter is young enough to serve his full-time and operationally ready NS duties in full, MINDEF will press for a short jail sentence.
- Where the defaulter has reached an age when he cannot serve his full-time NS in a combat vocation or fulfil his operationally ready NS obligations in full, a longer jail sentence to reflect the period of NS he has evaded may be appropriate.
- Where the defaulter has reached an age when he cannot be called up for NS at all, a jail sentence up to the maximum of three years may be appropriate.
Each year, a small number of people are convicted for their failure to enlist or refusal to be conscripted. [13] Most of them were Jehovah's Witnesses, who are usually court-martialled and sentenced to three years' imprisonment, but they are usually held in a low-security detention facility and separated from other conscription offenders. The government does not consider conscientious objection to be a legal reason for refusal to serve NS. Since 1972, the publications of Jehovah's Witnesses have been outlawed in Singapore. [14] This is commonly misinterpreted to mean that Jehovah's Witnesses themselves are outlawed in Singapore.
Note: There is no ban on JWs per se, but literature is definitely banned.
The government of Singapore is similar to that of China. Only one political party has held power. In Singapore it is the Peoples Action Party:
The People's Action Party (abbrev: PAP) has been Singapore's ruling political party since 1959. It is one of the two major parties in Singapore, the other being the Workers' Party.
Since the 1963 general elections, the PAP has dominated Singapore's parliamentary democracy and has been central to the city-state's rapid political, social, and economic development. [4] However, it has been criticised for the passing of laws that suppress free speech and other civil liberties. [5] [6]
The Communist Party of China (CPC) has evolved from Mao's hardline version of Communism to today's version which cannot be called communist by any stretch of the imagination. But both Singapore's PAP and China's CPC both have extensive SOE's (State Owned Enterprises) although China has announced plans to sell shares in many SOEs.
My point is, considering China's similarity to Singapore, that the government will not allow a group to teach a course of action in conflict with a state policy.
OTOH, China now has the largest population of web users in the world, probably around 590.6 million, according to Pew Research ( http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/02/china-has-more-internet-users-than-any-other-country/ ) and while discussion of some subjects is certainly banned, there is extensive discussion of many previously forbidden topics. So maybe the department that oversees religious propaganda is prepared to permit the website.
If we can believe the sites that test for Chinese banning, I think this jw urban myth has been totally blown out of the water! Hopefully some jws will find this out. It's a bald-faced lie!
Not only that, but jehoopla's spirit is not letting the word of the jws into China before it lets the word of jehovahs-witness.net into China! Think about that. Proof positive the Almighty's spirit is not with the dubs, if you ask me.
jwgift.org apparently works in China so at least our friends there can still send their YEN to the WTS in the UK!!
George
http://jwtalk.net/forums/topic/12881-china-experiencewow/
There is a screen shot purporting to show jw.org within China but plenty of debunking and retractions of the rumour.
