Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Question No. 13


You can subscribe to these questions using the RSS feed (the broadcast icon in the address bar), and you'll see them in your news reader when I post them.

You can submit an answer using the "Questions" e-mail link at the What You Need to Know web site. (Look in the lower, right-hand section of that page.)

If you submit the earliest best answer, I'll post your answer (without your name) and a critique here a week after the question was posted. It will be in the "Comments" section for that question.



Here's Question No. 13 (It's a Short Answer - Concept question.):

The governments of Iran and China have gone to great lengths to restrict the flow of information about political events beyond their borders.

•Describe a similarity in the political cultures of Iran and China.
•Explain how that similarity helps account for the countries' unwillingness to allow the free flow of international information.



(See pp. 85, 95 - 98 141 - 142, and 148 - 151 in What You Need to Know.)



Don't neglect the What You Need to Know Facebook pages

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. Both countries have essentially only one party. In Iran, every party has vrey similar ideologies, and opposition parties are rare to come by. For example, Mousavi, from the green party, got death threats chanted at him. In China, the Communist Party rules all.
2. Since both parties demand all of the power, they feel the need to control the information their citizens can access because they are scared that it will lead to citizens no longer supporting the party. Or, they would read about successul coup d'etats or overthrows and get some ideas of their own. Which both countries would definitely like to avoid.

Ken Wedding said...

No points out two possible for part 1. There are many parties in Iran and while they are transient, there are real differences among them. It's acceptable to say there's only one party in China, even though there are several recognized opposition parties because those parties only exist with the permission of the Communist Party.

Since the described similarity is not accurate, the explanation cannot earn any points.

Ken Wedding said...

From Anonymous:

"Political cultures in Iran and China are both influenced by pro-officials ideologies -- principles from the Qur'an and Confucianism respectively. In brief, the shared guiding principle from the respective ideologies is that the high-level officials or leaders know best, and citizens should "know their place" in society (because interfering with the government is unnecessary and harmful to society).

"Thus, to address this guiding principle, both countries have felt that it is in the country's best interests to severely limit and censor the free flow of information."
============================

One point of two possible for the first part of the question. Confucianism, no matter how much Communism or socialism with Chinese characteristics might superficially look like it, is not the official ideology.

Given the inaccuracy in the first part of the response, no points are possible for the second part.