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Beijing is banning all foreign media from publishing online in China
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y agoThis is pure insanity: "Quartz contacted the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology from Hong Kong asking for further clarification on how the rules would work, but the ministry said it could only reply to faxed questions that came from a reporter with a mainland press card."
- fweespeech 11y agoThey are cutting off the foreign news outlets. If you aren't a mainland Chinese journalist with a press card of that nature they no longer have any interest in your opinion. Why bother replying to people you don't care about?
- vermontdevil 11y agoClassic bureaucracy evasive manuever. I see it here in the US as well. "We only accept queries by email and will reply within three to five days" or "It will cost $1 per page to print" etc.
- est 11y agoCould international press community do something like embargo all mainland reporters?
- restalis 11y agoI'm afraid this will suit Chinese authorities just fine. This is not how you want to play this game.
- landryraccoon 11y agoThat only strengthens the totalitarian government's position by further blocking any outside ideas. They don't care whether the press makes money, they want control.
- Futurebot 11y ago"isolating closed regimes is like 'threatening a drowning man with a lifeboat'" - Ian Bremmer, the J Curve: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1071855.html http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1071855.html
- rodgerd 11y agoThe government censor in New Zealand wants web sites to submit their material, item by item, to the censor's office for approval. Australia and the UK already have firewalls that filter all Internet traffic which "my bad, so sorry" seem to keep "accidentally" including all sorts of sites their backing legislation doesn't justify (at least as far as anyone can tell - the Australian government list is confidential). The UK is trying to roll out laws requiring all citizens to register with the government to view R18 material. China is just playing catch-up at this point.
- Joof 11y agoTheir 'great firewall' is incredibly sophisticated and has lead to domestic companies like Baidu filling in gaps left by foreign companies. Weirdly, I think its helped China become a bigger power.
- gohrt 11y agoIt's called protectionism and had been the cornerstone of economic power growth for centuries
- goodcjw2 11y agoChina is definitely the leader on the matter. Not a follower.
- snori74 11y agoReally? Perhaps you could enlighten those of us that live there and have not noticed this. There is a widely used block on CP sites: https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-DCEFS https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-DCEFS - but that's a very different thing.
- spangry 11y agoHere's an example from Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-asics-attempt-to-block-one-website-took-down-250000-20130605-2np6v.html http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-asics-a... Not deliberate censorship (excluding the 1200 they did intend to censor, of course). I've had many dealings with ASIC throughout my career and can assure you that most of their 'bad actions' can be ascribed to incompetence rather than malice. Not that it's much of a comfort; the outcomes of giving power to evil are roughly the same as giving power to stupid.
- sft 11y ago"Pravin Lal: As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." from Alpha Centauri (the video game) Funny how this was about the Americans and not the more obvious choice.
- superbatfish 11y agoThis seems like a huge deal. How does this not have 100's of upvotes on HN? Am I missing something?
- kolencherry 11y agoAt the time of this comment, the article was posted less than an hour ago.
- kawera 11y agoFirst mention of the subject posted 10 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131742
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JohnTHaller 11y agoIt's only been up an hour. And to most Americans (the largest portion of HN's readership), this seems like par for the course for China.
- restalis 11y ago"acquisition of an online publishing license"!? "How do you license media in an age when everyone could become a writer and publisher?" As far as I can imagine - you don't, that's the thing! Maybe they won't do you anything for now, but if they don't like what you're publishing they will have a ready-available "legal" reason for detaining you for publishing without a publishing license (which of course could be claimed to be totally unrelated to your published content)!
- ommunist 11y agoThis is how business is conducted in mainland China. Want to publish your blog - apply for a state license first.
- song 11y agoWell, ever since the change of government China has been closing back on itself again and censorship has been stronger and stronger. It's not surprising and tells me I made the right choice to leave the country in 2013...
- JPKab 11y agoAre you a Chinese national? Just wondering what your thoughts on the reasons for this move are.
- suryon 11y agoI was told that the current president is a real traditionalist and that he "secretly / openly" detest the capitalism.
- justaman 11y agoIt seems that the wealthiest Chinese are quickly leaving China for the US. I believe that this will have negative impacts on their long term growth.
- logfromblammo 11y agoI always wondered why the US has never seemed all that concerned with their trade deficit with China. Imports and paid for with exports, after all. It turns out that the US has been playing a long game. America imports cargo containers filled with manufactured goods, and exports one-way, first-class plane tickets to America (and Vancouver), for use by the Chinese nouveaux-riches. Brilliant. Devious and brilliant. The dollars never need to be exchanged into yuan, because they come back inside immigration-curious pockets. Export the factory; import the tycoon carrying the factory profits. And if China tries to stop it in the usual way, the brain drain only worsens. It's more like a brain siphoning. But taking the foil hat off, it's probably just entirely accidental. Not that the US wouldn't milk it for maximum benefit anyway, but it's just too much like the outcome of a cursed monkey's paw wish to have been planned that way.
- song 11y ago
- nvk 11y agoThey have to handle the devaluation of the Renminbi and a slumping economy somehow /s
- dageshi 11y agoSounds like the normal thing in China. Make something illegal, don't enforce it, if someone's saying something you don't like then enforce it specifically against them, keeps everyone else in line.
- pkaye 11y agoSelective enforcement of laws in very common in many countries. If they enforce is too harshly then people will protest. For example exceeding the speed limit while driving.
- bsder 11y agoHarsh enforcement also causes their revenue to drop. Several of the towns which depended upon speed traps for their funding found out that the Internet is a good resource for letting people know to avoid an area. This will be interesting when self-driving cars don't ever disobey traffic laws.
- restalis 11y ago"This will be interesting when self-driving cars don't ever disobey traffic laws." It will be even more interesting when the passed laws and administrative acts will be automatically checked and validated (by something other than humans) so that fining won't be for addressing some revenue deficit but for actually preventing harmful phenomena!
- jimbokun 11y agoHadn't thought about this before your comment, but this could be a reason for continuing to drive themselves. If they are willing to exceed the speed limit, they can get to their destination faster than a self driving car with speed limit enforced by software.
- pkaye 11y agoSay you are driving 10 mph over the speed limit on a 60 mph highway for an hour, the maximum time savings is less than 10 minutes out of an hour. If the trip is shorter or you have stop, turns, traffic, the savings are even less. So in most cases except long distance drives, the savings are minimal. It is just that we are all impatient.
- curt15 11y agoThe govt is just aiming to completely rewrite history. Tiananmen square? Never happened!
- ommunist 11y agoFortunately for the China, it did not happened.
- venomsnake 11y agoI think that China's openness (or lack of) in internet affairs is strongly correlated with the health of their economy. It could be a nice proxy.
- sharetea 11y agoAnd so it starts. Economic collapse will prompt the dictatorship in China to - Increase anti-foreign rhetorics in media. Don't like it, Microsoft? tough - Ban Foreign services. Don't like it, Uber? tough - Devalue Yuan by 50%. Don't like it, Apple? tough - Nationalize foreign assets. Don't like it, Ford? tough
- PakG1 11y ago- Devalue Yuan by 50%. Don't like it, Apple? tough Actually, I think Apple would love that. Decreases their manufacturing costs. :)
- dmoy 11y agoPotentially 50% decrease in sales in their 2nd largest market though? That sounds really rough...
- mahyarm 11y agoThey are already fairly luxury priced, so a price doubling wouldn't be as big of a sales depressor as you would think. And many other things would go up in price with a depressed currency in general.
- danmaz74 11y ago> Devalue Yuan by 50%. Don't like it, Apple? tough Why wouldn't Apple like this? Their manufacturing costs would become much lower, and they would rack up even more billions in profits.
- restalis 11y agoHe somehow assumed that choosing the Apple products have something to do with their price affordability.
- jimbokun 11y agoApple is looking to China for further sales growth. Fewer Chinese buying iPhones is probably a bigger problem for them than higher manufacturing costs. Tim Cook has already made a big deal about "currency headwinds" to explain Apple's slowing revenue growth.
- est 11y agoplease note this also includes online gaming. Blizzard, Valve and Steam would be in some trouble
- outside1234 11y agoHow is this not a World Trade Organization treaty violation? Serious question.
- SCAQTony 11y agoI am not a sociologist, political scientist, or an economist. It appears that China is too big to govern and has become a diseconomy of scale. China has 160 cities with over 1-million people in them (US has 10 cities) and I think it's a miracle that the lights still work and they have running water. When you double the size of a plane it it becomes 4-times heavier (Observe what it takes to fly a B-52). The PRC seems to be circling the wagons to protect from some unknown enemy that the free flow of information will allow the arrows to strike.
- agumonkey 11y agoIt's odd between mainstream media talking about how China is becoming the main power ignoring structural issues of that kind. But that's only a 'theory' so far, how to know if China will evolve into tumor or functioning organism.
- coliveira 11y agoThese things work until they suddenly stop working. The USSR was considered to be as wealthy as the USA until a few years before its end. Few people really saw it coming, and they were not believed by the media.
- clw8 11y agoIs there a good summary of this anywhere? Sounds incredibly interesting.
- KineticLensman 11y agoCheck out the link [1] for a quick intro. Personally I'm not sure that China today is quite like the Soviet Union just before the end of the cold war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Final_years_.281985.E2.80.9391.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Final_years_.281985.E...
- ommunist 11y agoI confirm that. In 1989 I talked out a stipend from the enterprise I wished to work for in the USSR. I thought my future is all set. What happened in 1991 was a complete surprise for me, and completely redefined my future.
- davesque 11y agoAnd people wonder why their stock market is tanking...
- xjp250 11y agoXi Jin Ping is worse than King jong un. He is a stupid and arrogant leader. He want people in China to call him "习大大(xi big big)", but actually we like to call him "习包子(xi bao zi)"
- x0x0 11y agoI don't speak chinese; can you explain why xi bao zi is not flattering? Thanks!
- Raphmedia 11y agoThey are calling him a steamed bread or something like that.
- artemisyna 11y agoBao zi = buns, like pork buns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozi Basically, he's got a nickname that resembles "little piggy". (By intent, not literal translation.)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- xjp250 11y agobaozi is a traditionsl food of China. When xi came to power at the very beginning, a picture is shown in main stream media of China that Xi devouring his BaoZi and paying for his meal just like everyone else. Xi's performance is too bad, all the people know that is just a show. Now Xi show its true feature, he is not a man of the people, he is just a Dictator.
- SeanDav 11y agoFrom the Chinese government point of view they have several good reasons (for them) for doing this, chief among them (in my opinion) saving face and controlling mass opinion. When China was the huge success story it was, until recently, they were far more tolerant of criticism. Even then, the Chinese Government would clamp down very quickly on criticism. Right now their tolerance is pretty much zero. They do not want to admit or even hear that they have done anything wrong or that China has significant problems. They also greatly fear any kind of mass action. During the boom years, with high employment and everyone happy, there was little chance of mass action. Now with entire industrial areas becoming ghost towns, high unemployment, no pensions and growing poverty, mass action becomes a real threat.
- Animats 11y agoChina's leadership seems to be becoming more paranoid. Yet China has no serious external enemies other than the ones they make for themselves, the economy is stressed a bit but production is in great shape, and the standard of living has been rising for years. Why?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoWhich is easier. Keeping your existing tight grip hanging from a suspended bar? Or grabbing on tighter after you've let go a a bit?
- Animats 11y ago"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers" - Leia
- partisan 11y agoIf you control the populace's view of the outside world then you can turn foreigners into anything you want them to be: monsters, war mongers, greedy capitalists intent on collapsing your economy and taking away the dream of prosperity, etc. China has too many single men who will never know marriage and who present a huge threat to their society. It is better to point the tip of that spear in a different direction through tightly controlled propaganda. War, cold or hot, is on the horizon.
- api 11y agoMy brother in law lived there for years and claims that the general sense is that if the leadership can't maintain at least 5-10% GDP growth forever they will lose favor. People there are very unsatisfied with the government but they're also afraid of revolution. Paranoia seems a good description of the government's mentality.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoAre exponential functions taught in China?
- MrKristopher 11y agoTo me this looks like a big win for companies based in China. The social media companies for the billion people in China will be employing local people, and the advertising revenue will stay within China. Not that this is the main goal of the ban though..
- ajeet_dhaliwal 11y agoSeems absurdly broad, if this article is correct. Doesn't this basically mean Chinese would be unable to read or view anything we can? Including this site? With the exception of Chinese published/created information.
- ktRolster 11y agoMost Chinese don't read English, so they can't access this site anyway.
- natch 11y agoThere are some qualifiers around this alarming headline. According to this story [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-set-to-ban-all-foreign-media-from-publishing-online-a6883366.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-set-to-ba...]: 'This ban covers words, pictures, maps, games, animation and sound of an "informational and thoughtful nature" -- unless they have approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.' Still it's very onerous but not a complete shutdown.
- ripdog 11y agoUh, exactly what part of a foreign-invested news site would NOT fall under those criteria? The site map? This is a wholesale ban.
- natch 11y agoYou're only focusing on news sites, which of course are important. And yes it's (effectively) a ban on news sites, but not necessarily on non-news sites.
- vpalan2 11y agoIf I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident.
- vikiomega9 11y agoCan you explain to me why (like I'm 5 :D) EDIT: Context for my question is that of rule of law and how much can get away without actually having an effect at the top.
- omegaham 11y agoHere's how I would explain it to a 5-year-old - when you make laws like this, you make everyone else not want to do business with you. This means that you only get to business with people in your own country. 7 billion people with ideas is going to be much better than just one billion people with ideas. The 7 billion people have more money, more ideas, and more people to make cool things, and you're stuck with your one billion people. You will be left behind.
- longcheng 11y agowell, with this law, you got stability and can focus on things important. With 1 billion well educated ppl, I am not too worried about shortage of talent.
- omegaham 11y agoBut with stability, you also get stagnation. The State being able to crush upstarts to protect their own interests means a lot of those 1 billion people won't challenge the powers that be.
- vikiomega9 11y ago1 billion is a massively variable population in it self.
- a3n 11y agoAnd this is the country that we're looking to, to bring North Korea back into the fold.
- _snydly 11y agoWill Hacker News be blocked? It looks like it's currently available: http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com
- PakG1 11y agoBased in China. There are occasional times I'm unable to access HN without VPN. No idea if that's because it's being blocked or packets just aren't being given priority. Admittedly, China's pipes to the rest of the world are not very large.
- troebr 11y agoThey don't block foreign VPNs?
- snnn 11y agoCertainly they do. They use a machine learning DPI algorithm to block oversea VPNs and HTTPS/Socks proxys. So you can't hide your proxy in SSL or ssh tunnels.
- Aloisius 11y agoHow common are VPNs and proxies in China? Is there a lot of demand for getting around the great wall?
- snnn 11y agoAlmost all foreigners has a vpn to access their facebook and gmail. And for the demand, let me show you an example: Several months ago, a malware, XcodeGhost, infects EVERY large internet company in China. The attack worked by tricking developers into using a fake version of Xcode, Apple's software development tool, to build apps. So their apps were published to Apple App Store with hidden malicious code. This virus also has a android version. You may wonder why these developers didn't download the xcode and android sdk from apple and google's website directly. They are the top class developers in China. But the fact is they rarely use these websites and services. You can live without google even you are an android developer.
- paulddraper 11y ago"banning all foreign media from publishing online in China" Seems like a contradiction. Are you publishing online, or in China?
- ripdog 11y agoUh, I think this means the firewall will block you unless your investment is 100% mainland and you have a license.
- smegel 11y agoI would say bad China, but given how polarised and politicised the Western media is, I find it hard to fault them. Unbiased journalism seems such a quaint concept these days, and as the divisions between right and left take on an almost war like characteristic, everything becomes propaganda. Hell, I might even move to China to get away from it all.
- lukasb 11y agodoes that mean no Stack Exchange?
- snnn 11y agoIf Stack Exchange were allowed to post Chinese, it will be blocked immediately. The Great FireWall filters contents by keywords.
- pbkhrv 11y agoThis might be one of the things they are doing to prepare for a wave of negative news about the state of their economy.
- rdlecler1 11y agoAny non-Chinese company that insists on tying its fortune to the Chinese market is taking on tremendous risk. The goal posts are always changing , you need to constantly worry about IP theft, you can easily get on the wrong side of the government, and they strongly protect local interests. Investment is welcome, but as soon as you actually start making a lot of money and recouping your investment some barrier of sorts is bound to appear and you'll be phased out in favor of a local player. This is going to come back to haunt China at a time when growth is slowing and when they are going to need investment the most.
- gman83 11y agoNot entering the market is also a risk. Say you're an app developer and you don't publish your app on Chinese app stores, chances are someone else will do it anyway and steal the revenue. Good luck finding it and getting it taken down. (Off course chances are it'll still be stolen even if you publish it yourself there)
- fkjewfjkew 11y agoThat's a pretty limited case that doesn't affect 99.9% of economic activity.
- ISL 11y agoWorking real hard and getting shut down is more personally-negative than doing nothing and having someone else profit. Both ways, you get no revenue, but one way, you waste a lot of time first. It's not worth compromising your principles in order to capture 18% of the world market. 82% is a lot bigger than 18%.
- qihqi 11y agoIt looks like China will change the 'blacklist' model of the Great Fire Wall to a 'whitelist' model. That is the only way they can enforce this law. Maybe they got tired of having banned content mirrored by un-blocked IP ranges and constantly having to hunt them down.
- invaliddata 11y agoDoes anyone know to what extent this affects news organizations in Hong Kong?
- sdm 11y agoNo effect. For now at least. One country two systems. These restrictions would violate Basic Law.
- longcheng 11y agoChairman Mao once said, "our enemy would attack us with pen & gun". Looks like Beijing is taking the pen away from its enemy. :-)
- majewsky 11y agoThe variable in this equation is the definition of "our enemy".
- chrischen 11y agoAny move China takes that blocks foreign competition can be seen as an extreme version of an import tariff. Instead of protecting low level industries like corn producers either subsidizing domestic production or taxing foreign imports, China focuses on higher level industries like technology companies, culture companies, etc. While China doesn't have the benefit of Google in the short term, by blocking them it gives it a chance for local companies to develop the technology and catch up. Also take the example of TOMs shoes giving away free shoes replacing local markets and producers. These poor countries of weak governments, and even a small foreign company can impact the local the economy in uncertain ways. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economics-toms-shoes http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economic... If you can understand this you can understand the viewpoint of Chinese officials. We come in with the viewpoint of "how can I have my fair and equal opportunity to extract wealth from China" while the capitalists in China are thinking "how can I extract wealth from China and prevent the foreigners from doing so." In reality the playing field isn't level. Our counterparts in China don't have the same education, quality of life, and financial status. Therefore a foreign company with foreign talent would already enter the market with an upper hand. By the time local companies are ready, they'd be fighting an uphill battle against foreign incumbents, or worse yet, not develop at all. If you're familiar with Star Trek, there's the concept of the Prime Directive. It's principle is that the developed races must never contact or interfere with an undeveloped race because doing so would alter their natural development. Foreign companies don't have an inherent right to the Chinese market. If they feel they do, or want to enter, it's because they feel there is profit in it. The profit comes from exploiting the opportunity in the local market, and in an underdeveloped market such opportunities are ripe. This isn't exactly fair if mature companies are allowed unfettered access.
- rsanek 11y agoIn the linked article regarding TOMS shoes: "While statistical significance is nowhere to be seen, by dint of their consistency the results are reasonably convincing." That's not how statistical significance works; if you don't reach it, you can't say anything about whether or not there is an effect. The actual research paper is here: http://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=econ http://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005.... In it, the authors say "After controlling for household and parental characteristics as well as ADP-level fixed effects, we can uncover no statistically significant negative impact on shoe purchases in local markets."
- rahimzayid 11y agoThis is not that rare .. pretty much the same applies for Arab countries in my eys.
- JoneyKing 11y agothis very bad news!
- ommunist 11y agoThis is imperial. I especially like the notion that Ministry only answers to reporters with mainland press pass. The China is the center of the civilized world again, the world where the US is a barbarian outskirt. Will the foreign websites published in Mandarin be banned to view from mainland China?
- jcyw 11y agoBan the sea trade and the tea. History repeats.
- contingencies 11y agoI've worked for foreign publishers here in China. I've worked for foreign publishers that have been raided and shut down by the publishing bureau in China. I've continued to work for the same foreign publishers, operating essentially the same business, even after they were raided, and seen them continue successfully for more than a decade. There are rules and there is implementation. Reality in China is not so cut and dried. I share pbkhrv's sentiment about this possibly being a preparation for a rash of bad economic news late this year. I have it on very reasonable authority that the RMB will tank at least 15% by end of year. The view from here in China is basically the same as ever... nobody with money really cares about foreign journalism and reporting, only food prices (steadily increasing), education (crisis), health (crisis), pollution (huge) and inflation (big). Transport is also a problem. They just try to get their money out. The Chinese government has a difficult job. They don't really do too badly when all things are considered.
- tonyferguson742 11y agoIt's getting harder every single day to run a business in China as a foreign company.
- yuanotes 11y agoYou guys really don't know how things work in China. As a Chinese I don't give a damn about these new ridiculous rules since we always have ways to bypass them. And theses things changes very fast in this country. We have laws, and the way them work are different than that in western countries.