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The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense. Everyone thinks of themselves as being rational and unbiased - But in fact, we are all irrational, biased and

The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense. Everyone thinks of themselves as being rational and unbiased - But in fact, we are all irrational, biased and at times hypocritical. Those people who think that they are rational and objective are usually the least rational and most hypocritical of all because they lack self-awareness. As westerners, as much as we like to pretend that we know the whole truth, in reality, what we know is only a biased approximation of it. The west likes to impose their version of the truth on the whole world but China is determined to stick to their version - I don't see anything wrong with that; especially if it works in their favour. Regardless of how you look at it; the west is aggressive when it comes to spreading its ideals and values. If China wasn't so protecive, they would have become economically dependent on the west (as opposed to being the powerhouse they are today).

gohrt 10y ago
Who is "China" who picks "their" version? The Chinese Communist Party, or the Chinese people? How would China become dependent on the West if Chinese people had access to non-CommunityParty ideas?
- jondubois 10y ago
  Chinese people would be consuming western media through Facebook, Twitter etc... Through this media, they would be shown advertisements for US companies selling US products. Soon enough, Chinese people would no longer be content with Chinese-made goods and services from small Chinese suppliers (e.g. through decentralized marketplaces like Alibaba) - Instead they would start buying US goods through centralized marketplaces like Amazon and Apple store - Basically the money would leave China and they would all be worse off on average. By keeping western media out, they keep Chinese money in. Don't ignore the fact that media is paid for almost entirely by advertising and that advertising is paid for entirely by companies who need to sell products.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    > Instead they would start buying US goods through centralized marketplaces like Amazon and Apple store Both totally available in China already via their local forms (store.apple.cn and amazon.cn). My wife orders from Amazon a lot.
  - ralusek 10y ago
    Letting the Chinese people choose what the Chinese people want is what's right for the Chinese people. If they are advertised US products and Chinese products, and they purchase US products, so be it. It happens in the other direction all the time, and it funds China from the west. Economics aside though, there are enormously dangerous consequences to controlling the exchange of information.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    Instead they would start buying US goods through centralized marketplaces like Amazon and Apple store What "US good" - all that stuff is made in China to begin with! Well, OK, not literally everything, but as interconnected as the global economy is, what you are proposing strikes me as pretty much nonsensical. China won't benefit from "protecting" itself from trading with the West.
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    >Soon enough, Chinese people would no longer be content with Chinese-made goods and services from small Chinese suppliers Seeing China's nouveau riche and the general demand for western luxury goods, and hell even Buicks, you don't know what you're talking about.
joe_the_user 10y ago
I find the many "the West is a problematic too" responses here a bit troubling. Not that I don't find the West problematic but the many problems of the West don't actually make China's problems any better and I'm not sure there are many who seem to think they do.
- jondubois 10y ago
  China definitely has its problems but my point is that there are problems everywhere and we shouldn't single-out any specific country because we think that their problems are worse than ours (maybe they have the opposite opinion). The reality is that no one has the moral high ground; we are all competing for resources and relevance and every country is willing to resort to dirty tricks to get ahead. China has the Great Firewall, the US has the NSA...
  - waterhouse 10y ago
    Here is a general argument for giving more criticism to countries (or, in general, bad actors) who do worse things: It provides a better incentive gradient to avoid doing bad things than complaining equally about all countries that do at least some of a bad thing.
  - kmonsen 10y ago
    One is allowing free information while the other has the great firewall and random arrests for people writing negative comments about the party in power. Although the US is not as democratic as it should be your comparison is not even laughable. I find it hard that people can be so misled, or maybe you are just trolling. China has a brutal dictatorship that executes people for trying to get more power and were responsible for the Tiananmen massacre and still will not even admit it happened. If you think you could live in China and even write anything about the party the way you write about the US government from your comment you are delusional. The US has a very free press and free speech for everyone.
    - charoko 10y ago
      > If you think you could live in China and even write anything about the party the way you write about the US government from your comment you are delusional. Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Source: http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows-government-criticism-silences-collective-expression http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-a...
swang 10y ago
yeah man, good thing china is shielding its people from the history massacre at tiananmen square or the random killing of people who disagree with the government. and how about even being unable to speak about how much of a womanizer (and thus a hypocrite) mao was because you fear for your life. how would any of that make china vulnerable economically to the west? i mean they're already doing a good job of that themselves. imagine if you couldn't make a joke about bill clinton, or had to worry about trump killing you if he was elected president. i would rather china get "influenced" by the west than continue going that route. edit: how does limiting the information of your citizens allowing them to make rational decisions? it doesn't.
- chrischen 10y ago
  Martin Luther King was also a womanizer, and Western media self-censors that aspect of him. Propaganda and bias happens everywhere.
  - swang 10y ago
    uhm, no? you are free and open to say MLK was a womanizer. like literally right now you are allowed to post this onto HN with no repercussions to your well being. try printing that mao was a womanizer in a chinese newspaper.
  - frahs 10y ago
    There's a difference between biased reporting and citizens being forbidden from talking about something online. If you made the same post but about some Chinese politician and in China, you could get in trouble for that.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
This is known as the "And you are lynching negroes" argument, from the Soviet rhetorical tactic used to deflect attention from their own human rights abuses without actually having to address them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes > If China wasn't so protecive, they would have become economically dependent on the west (as opposed to being the powerhouse they are today). You're claiming that China's economic growth and independence is because they censor their citizens?
- chrischen 10y ago
  They censor outside influence and ideas that are influenced from the outside. Obviously ideas that infect people within China would be in practice censoring "Chinese" people.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    > They censor outside influence and ideas that are influenced from the outside. Well, no, they censor all ideas that run contrary to the party line, period, regardless of origin. I suppose you could try to claim that no Chinese person could ever independently conceive of an idea that contravenes the will of the Party, so if such ideas occur then they must have been crowbarred into their innocent minds by foreign propagandists, but that would be stupid. > Obviously ideas that infect people within China would be in practice censoring "Chinese" people. Huh?
chj 10y ago
> The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense To whom? Isolation won't do any good in the long run.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  20 years seems like a good run so far.
  - chj 10y ago
    GFW project was started around 2004, and google was blocked years later. Let's see how it will turn out in 2024.
akira2501 10y ago
> [...] we know the whole truth, in reality, what we know is only a biased approximation of it. well.. clearly, censorship is the answer, then.

gohrt 10y ago

Who is "China" who picks "their" version? The Chinese Communist Party, or the Chinese people? How would China become dependent on the West if Chinese people had access to non-CommunityParty ideas?

jondubois 10y ago
Chinese people would be consuming western media through Facebook, Twitter etc... Through this media, they would be shown advertisements for US companies selling US products. Soon enough, Chinese people would no longer be content with Chinese-made goods and services from small Chinese suppliers (e.g. through decentralized marketplaces like Alibaba) - Instead they would start buying US goods through centralized marketplaces like Amazon and Apple store - Basically the money would leave China and they would all be worse off on average. By keeping western media out, they keep Chinese money in. Don't ignore the fact that media is paid for almost entirely by advertising and that advertising is paid for entirely by companies who need to sell products.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  > Instead they would start buying US goods through centralized marketplaces like Amazon and Apple store Both totally available in China already via their local forms (store.apple.cn and amazon.cn). My wife orders from Amazon a lot.
- ralusek 10y ago
  Letting the Chinese people choose what the Chinese people want is what's right for the Chinese people. If they are advertised US products and Chinese products, and they purchase US products, so be it. It happens in the other direction all the time, and it funds China from the west. Economics aside though, there are enormously dangerous consequences to controlling the exchange of information.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  Instead they would start buying US goods through centralized marketplaces like Amazon and Apple store What "US good" - all that stuff is made in China to begin with! Well, OK, not literally everything, but as interconnected as the global economy is, what you are proposing strikes me as pretty much nonsensical. China won't benefit from "protecting" itself from trading with the West.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  >Soon enough, Chinese people would no longer be content with Chinese-made goods and services from small Chinese suppliers Seeing China's nouveau riche and the general demand for western luxury goods, and hell even Buicks, you don't know what you're talking about.

joe_the_user 10y ago

I find the many "the West is a problematic too" responses here a bit troubling. Not that I don't find the West problematic but the many problems of the West don't actually make China's problems any better and I'm not sure there are many who seem to think they do.

jondubois 10y ago
China definitely has its problems but my point is that there are problems everywhere and we shouldn't single-out any specific country because we think that their problems are worse than ours (maybe they have the opposite opinion). The reality is that no one has the moral high ground; we are all competing for resources and relevance and every country is willing to resort to dirty tricks to get ahead. China has the Great Firewall, the US has the NSA...
- waterhouse 10y ago
  Here is a general argument for giving more criticism to countries (or, in general, bad actors) who do worse things: It provides a better incentive gradient to avoid doing bad things than complaining equally about all countries that do at least some of a bad thing.
- kmonsen 10y ago
  One is allowing free information while the other has the great firewall and random arrests for people writing negative comments about the party in power. Although the US is not as democratic as it should be your comparison is not even laughable. I find it hard that people can be so misled, or maybe you are just trolling. China has a brutal dictatorship that executes people for trying to get more power and were responsible for the Tiananmen massacre and still will not even admit it happened. If you think you could live in China and even write anything about the party the way you write about the US government from your comment you are delusional. The US has a very free press and free speech for everyone.
  - charoko 10y ago
    > If you think you could live in China and even write anything about the party the way you write about the US government from your comment you are delusional. Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Source: http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows-government-criticism-silences-collective-expression http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-a...

swang 10y ago

yeah man, good thing china is shielding its people from the history massacre at tiananmen square or the random killing of people who disagree with the government. and how about even being unable to speak about how much of a womanizer (and thus a hypocrite) mao was because you fear for your life. how would any of that make china vulnerable economically to the west? i mean they're already doing a good job of that themselves. imagine if you couldn't make a joke about bill clinton, or had to worry about trump killing you if he was elected president. i would rather china get "influenced" by the west than continue going that route. edit: how does limiting the information of your citizens allowing them to make rational decisions? it doesn't.

chrischen 10y ago
Martin Luther King was also a womanizer, and Western media self-censors that aspect of him. Propaganda and bias happens everywhere.
- swang 10y ago
  uhm, no? you are free and open to say MLK was a womanizer. like literally right now you are allowed to post this onto HN with no repercussions to your well being. try printing that mao was a womanizer in a chinese newspaper.
- frahs 10y ago
  There's a difference between biased reporting and citizens being forbidden from talking about something online. If you made the same post but about some Chinese politician and in China, you could get in trouble for that.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

This is known as the "And you are lynching negroes" argument, from the Soviet rhetorical tactic used to deflect attention from their own human rights abuses without actually having to address them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes > If China wasn't so protecive, they would have become economically dependent on the west (as opposed to being the powerhouse they are today). You're claiming that China's economic growth and independence is because they censor their citizens?

chrischen 10y ago
They censor outside influence and ideas that are influenced from the outside. Obviously ideas that infect people within China would be in practice censoring "Chinese" people.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  > They censor outside influence and ideas that are influenced from the outside. Well, no, they censor all ideas that run contrary to the party line, period, regardless of origin. I suppose you could try to claim that no Chinese person could ever independently conceive of an idea that contravenes the will of the Party, so if such ideas occur then they must have been crowbarred into their innocent minds by foreign propagandists, but that would be stupid. > Obviously ideas that infect people within China would be in practice censoring "Chinese" people. Huh?

chj 10y ago

> The Great Firewall actually makes a lot of sense To whom? Isolation won't do any good in the long run.

dragontamer 10y ago
20 years seems like a good run so far.
- chj 10y ago
  GFW project was started around 2004, and google was blocked years later. Let's see how it will turn out in 2024.

akira2501 10y ago

> [...] we know the whole truth, in reality, what we know is only a biased approximation of it. well.. clearly, censorship is the answer, then.