Violence between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese broke out July 5th in the Chinese town of Urumqi. The riots were sparked by a ethnic brawl hundreds of miles away in Guandong province. Uighurs were upset by what they viewed as a weak response to the murders of two of their own by Han Chinese. The Internet has played a vital role in China by helping to organize the protest.
China has the most repressive Internet police on the planet. The Chinese government may have up to thirty-thousand Internet police, who search the Internet for news stories, blogs, or even comments that may be negative towards the regime. China has also requested that manufacturers who wish to sell their computers in China equip those computers with a "Green Dam," which is basically a firewall controlled by the government to block access to entire sites.
This explains why there has been very little citizen journalism, like we saw in Iran, available on sites like Youtube and Twitter. The Chinese also have imprisoned more journalist and cyber-dissidents than any other country in the world. Yet, even under one of the most tech savvy regimes, protesters have still been able to use the Internet on mobile phones and wireless laptops to organize against it.
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