Fax machines have helped, and anything that facilitates the exchange of ideas will only make China bend closer to a 'democracy standard'.
This network facilitates more propaganda; not the "exchange of ideas". A Chineze citizen would have to be a naive idiot, or a hard-core dissident not minding some time in a jail, to post anything subversive over a state network.
If you see how China has changed from 10 years ago to now (some form of capitalism), you will see that they cannot and will not run the country as communism was once run.
Capitalism != freedom of spech. Look at what's going on in Singapore.
Why go that far. Look at what's happening in USA.
Please make a difference between a person eating a burger and a state agency running the politically censored network.
Hmmm... Nah, too easy.
--vadim
Owen