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I've been told that the great firewall is actually more about protectionism than censorship. They know they can't really contain information, but they can block

• chx 10y ago
  Stop right there. Think of what you are doing. You are already trying to find positive values in Trump. Don't. Resist him. The whole world is in deep shit if he gets elected. Check https://twitter.com/ivan_hernandez/status/694388187284795392 https://twitter.com/ivan_hernandez/status/694388187284795392 as well :)
  • tmptmp 10y ago
    No, Trump has made many important and crucial things about USA. The matter of shoddy trade practices by China is one such thing. I guess, Trump is a right candidate for USA now given the situation of Islamist immigration and China and such things.
• mrb 10y ago
  I think most economists will tell you the USA-China economic trade benefits both countries. Few will tell you it is "unfair". China get American money, and the USA get swath of cheap goods.
  • seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    China's environment is ruined in the pursuit of cheap goods, which considering weren't really as cheap as China sold them for. China gets American money, which then goes back to buy America real estate just like Japan decided to do on the late 80s after investment oppurtunities started drying up at home. And we know what happened next....
• bnegreve 10y ago
  Interesting point, but to be fair China is not the only one to find ways to implement protectionism. The F35 program or even Nasa contracting SpaceX could be seen as examples of the US implementing some level of protectionism.
  • argonaut 10y ago
    Every nation has protectionism. Every single one. What's important is the degree of protectionism. So pointing out examples of a nation engaging in protectionism contributes little to the discussion unless you compare it to other nations.
    • bnegreve 10y ago
      Every nation has protectionism. Yes, that's my point. Not every one agrees with this and GGP's comment doesn't mention this fact. So pointing out examples [..] contributes little to the discussion. It adds examples of US protectionism so you can compare them with the ones from China that were mentioned before. Hopefully, this contributes to a more objective point of view. Why do I need to justify this?
      • argonaut 10y ago
        Because China's space program and defense industry are protected as well. So if we're really going to try to decide whether China or the US are more protectionist than the other, in that comparison the examples cancel each other out. All you've done is add examples to both sides of the balance beam. And we're still left with examples of Chinese internet industry protectionism.
    • sangnoir 10y ago
      > What's important is the degree of protectionism The US complaining about China's protectionism is hypocritical. Let's talk about America's farm subsidies. How is that not competing unfairly? It leads to American agricultural produce being dumped on foreign markets at subsidized prices, destroying entire countries' agricultural base. What would you say is the degree of protectionism here?
• chw9e 10y ago
  Chinese social media and search platforms employee loads of people to only censor information. If any of the Western companies tried to match the level of censorship required it would dramatically increase costs of operation. If Facebook or Google agreed to censor their content to the degree that Chinese companies do, I believe they could operate in China. Google and Facebook claim to be morally opposed to censoring information, but it's unclear to me if this is really the case, or if spending the money required to self-censor is the impetus behind their "moral actions." Obviously if China got rid of the censoring then the market would be much more attractive from a profit-based view. At the same time, if Facebook entered China today I don't know how many people would convert to using it like people from other countries do. WeChat is a really powerful player and a lot of recent Facebook Messenger features are basically pulled straight from WeChat. Same with Youtube and Vimeo - Youku and PPTV are basically Youtube, Netflix, and HBO combined in one. Chinese users can watch Netflix and HBO shows for free via Youku and PPTV's license deals with Western content producers. Plus Chinese users watch much less user-generated content online, unless it is live-streaming.
  • argonaut 10y ago
    1. You're conveniently ignoring the fact that Google did self-censor from 2005 to 2009. So the idea that it's "too expensive" being the reason is just FUD. Unsubstantiated speculation. 2. The question about whether or not Facebook/Google will succeed today is more misdirection. The real question is whether Google would have succeeded 11 years ago, and whether Facebook would have succeeded 7-8 years ago, because that's when they would have entered the market.
    • chw9e 10y ago
      I don't think that fact disputes my argument. Let's consider a few assumptions to try to see a more well-rounded view of the firewall problem. Consider for a moment that all domestic firms must comply with self-censorship or be forced offline (see Papi Jiang's recent problems with cursing in her programming and being forced offline). From this we can assume that censorship issues are not only an issue for foreign firms, but also a primary concern for domestic companies. If we accept these assumptions, then censorship is just a market condition in China, the same way that bad infrastructure or government instability are market conditions in some countries. The difference is that through the internet, foreign companies can escape this market condition and still compete with domestic firms. Whereas in a country with poor infrastructure all companies are subject to the market condition. Without a firewall, domestic firms would be at a severe disadvantage because foreign companies would be able to easily escape government discipline. Now, under these assumptions we can consider the Google case. Google tried to compete under these market conditions and lost. Thus, if we accept that the firewall is a way of the Chinese government extending market conditions to force fair competition, then any argument that Google could have beaten Baidu in the Chinese market is wrong. Of course, this assumption may not be correct, but unless you work in the Chinese internet bureau it is not possible know the motivations behind the firewall. I'm simply presenting a devil's advocate view.
• uola 10y ago
  Europe has done pretty much everything the US wants, from spying on our citizens to foreign companies paying little to no tax. All you hear these days is how lame Europe is because we don't have a Facebook and how we should all move to the overpriced small town of SV. China doesn't only have a Facebook, it has a Google, an Amazon and an Uber. Which are in many ways surpassing their US counterparts. Since when was trade ever fair? I think the bigger thing here is just that China isn't in the US sphere of influence in terms of politics, but also in terms of culture and it's treating them quite well.
  • seanp2k2 10y ago
    Agreed that it's overpriced in terms of real estate, but I wouldn't call it small; the Bay Area is home to over 7 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area The weather is also pretty nice in the South Bay (over 300 days of sunshine according to Wikipedia for San Jose). San Francisco technically gets a lot of sun, but anecdotally they get a lot of fog and shade as well, especially in certain areas of the city. There are other benefits to Left Coast living as well, but the rent is indeed high.
    • stephenr 10y ago
      > Left Coast Please don't do that.
    • uola 10y ago
      What can I say, Facebooks new headquarters: https://www.instagram.com/p/05d5kiF_8X/ https://www.instagram.com/p/05d5kiF_8X/ Tencents (wechat) new headquarters: http://www.kikiwangarch.com/tencent-hq/ http://www.kikiwangarch.com/tencent-hq/
  • tluyben2 10y ago
    They have a Google in terms of making money, they don't have a Google in terms of usefulness. The search engines in China are unusable; my Chinese colleagues are far less efficient than we are because of it. When i'm sitting next to them with my SSH lynx to Google, I find answers fast which they cannot. Baidu is just only bought links (inherently bad quality) and Bing is, well, just a really bad search engine. That's not only me though; my wife and I are learning Chinese and we use songs, tv shows and movies a lot for that; when we ask 'can we use X' to the teacher (who is in Hangzhou) she always answers 'I searched but cannot find it' while the first hits on Google are it it including a video on Youtube (not in China) or Tudou (in China). Not because it's banned but because the search doesn't work. Besides that you are right; especially things they do better; they have Facebook but the messenger (Wechat) is really were it is at; I use Wechat now instead of Messenger and it is superior even when you are not in China. Mainly because it just always 'works' and it's always fast unlike Messenger. Didi is better than Uber in many ways especially for the Chinese; for foreigners it's fine but Uber is more convenient for us as support is in English and most drivers for Uber speak a bit (enough) of English in China while the Didi ones speak no English at all usually.
• hunglee2 10y ago
  Excellent point. The net beneficiaries of 'free trade' rarely have cause to question the policies that have given them great returns. The last 200 years of Chinese history is describes very clearly the impact of the imposition of free trading principles, where the freedom to say 'no' to free trade (of opium) was overturned at the barrel of a gun. To this day, China refers to the 'century of humiliation' and is hyper conscious of being the unequal trading partner of the Western world ever again. China will no doubt have also learnt from the speed of economic development of the original Asian Tigers (S.Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) whose post WWII protectionist policies allowed domestic manufacturers the time to grow, compete, and in some case super cede with more mature foreign businesses when the time to open up finally came. We would not have Samsung, LG, Sony or Nintendo today if those governments did not protect their own industries from German, Italian, UK and US electronics manufacturers of that era. It seems that China is one of the few countries to apply these lessons to the internet era, and has the political control and consumer base to make it work. Whatever the personal agendas involved, it's a fascinating experiment. Perversely, it might even lead to a greater consumer choice in the end - sign up to WeChat, use Baidu - with innovation cycling faster due to the eco-system wide competition created by the firewall
  • bayesian_horse 10y ago
    If China had kept its isolationism from before the opium war for much longer, it's hard to imagine its emergence as an economic super power
    • hunglee2 10y ago
      Yes, I think I would agree. I would draw a difference between protectionism vs isolationism though. Protectionism is more like a temporary ringfence of strategic industries you want to nurture - the long game is always to unleash them into the competitive free market when they are fit for that competition. Perhaps that is indeed the real reason for the firewall - a plan, ridiculously long term plan - to conquer the world with domestically cultivated innovation
• devishard 10y ago
  > As much as I can't stand Trump and could never vote for him, I do think he's one of the few candidates raising the issue of how unfair our trade relations are with China. The WTO limits tariffs but the Chinese have found tons of indirect ways to implement protectionism: the great firewall, manipulating their currency, making it hard for US firms to take payments in China, etc. That's rich coming from the US.
  • cheriot 10y ago
    Does the US have a reputation for protectionism? From a domestic point of view it seems like everything outside of steel and farming has been opened up
    • byw 10y ago
      Auto industry. US/Canada have their own standards different from the UN standards the rest of the world adopts. Very few European cars are sold in NA beside a few high-end models.
• amelius 10y ago
  > The WTO limits tariffs but the Chinese have found tons of indirect ways to implement protectionism: the great firewall, manipulating their currency, making it hard for US firms to take payments in China, etc. On the other hand, the west has profited quite a bit from the underdevelopment of China in the past. So I can't really blame them.
• x2398dh1 10y ago
  No, it's definitely primarily about censorship. This is a one-party rule system...the party sets all of the policies at will, and their main goal is to keep themselves in power. The economy is merely a tool for them to keep themselves in power. Censorship and control of the media is a more powerful tool to keep themselves in power. They are much more worried about information flow than they are about protecting some tiny Chinese internet companies. That's not the mentality in China -- the mentality is..."let's help the big guys." You're misrepresenting the real situation - China is the US's 3rd largest export partner, and we export over $200B of goods, and much more in services to China per year, which is greater than the GDP of silicon valley. Trump is proposing that we stop all of that, which will lead to a depression.