State sponsored Censorship

It's a debate carried through the ages of all societies from ancient to postmodern...Censorship. Is the argument for censorship plausible, or just down right insulting? I hope you can sense my bias opinion here, but as an American living in southwest China, I find the idea appalling.
Barack Obama gave his inauguration speech the other night, and, as usual, delivered a strong, elegant oration about his hopes for the coming term. However, certain statements regarding communism, and dissent were censored out of the speech when translated into Chinese. Obama Censorship. My natural reaction to this is outrage, and disappointment. As a university teacher here in Chongqing, I see no effort on behalf of my students to counteract this government sanctioned oppression. Of course, some of my students would disagree with me, saying that this is not a form of oppression. To me, any attempt on behalf of a governing body to keep their citizens away from the "truth" is oppression. You Tube video on Internet censorship.
Since this IS a philosophy blog, lets take a look at some actual arguments for and against censorship:
The basic example of an argument about censorship that I can think of takes place in a Dr.'s office. A patient has a disease. The Dr. says, "I have this treatment plan that may cure you"; however, he leaves out the part where the treatment plan itself may cause great discomfort, harm, or even paralysis. Is it that the Dr. is of higher moral standing to make that decision about your life than you are? Is he misleading you by not offing you all the information for you to make your own informed decision?
In America, we must sign ,"informed consent" forms, saying that our Dr.s have given us all the information we need to make our own informed decision regarding our health.
NOW- relate that to state sponsored censorship- censorship then becomes a question of morality- THINK IT THROUGH- rooted at this value is the issue of harm. We shield our children from overly violent, and sexual material in order to 'protect' them from harm, but as an adult, fully capable of wielding our own opinions, state run censorship begins to look more like the gov't is protecting ITSELF from the people. The question becomes, who is protecting whom, and from what? Why? What is "harm"? Who decides?
What continues to vex me, is the complacency of it all. If you tell a child they are not to look at something, of course, the only thing on their mind is to try and look at it; yet, here in China, a completely complacent population exists of adults! OK- from Morality of harm to the ethics of good and evil, when taken to the extreme, no one is black or white on the issue. I for one, am PRO censorship when it comes to the sharing of private information. I would disapprove if a website decided to sell my financial records to another website, claiming it was ethical because of non censorship laws. However, when it comes to basic information about what is going on in the world, and historical facts, censorship is still thriving in China. Immanuel Kant opposed censorship in the enlightenment. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that judgement is sharpened by experience, and imagination...creating reason. The censorship of reason is only the limit one imposes on their own mind.
I just don't understand the complacency. it's not fear- fear never stopped a revolution. What is it? In my opinion, censorship only demonstrates how weak a society is, by implying it has no trust in itself. Censorship is the mark of an authoritarian government, a big brother scared to death of losing his status as favorite offspring. A government who has no faith in the opinion of its subjects has no business governing those subjects. As Voltaire said, "We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard".
I welcome all comments!
~Kristen