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China’s Internet Controls Will Get Stricter, to Dismay of Foreign Business

145 points by danielmorozoff 10y ago

bobjordan 10y ago
One does not simply launch a website on a server inside of China. First, I had to wait about four months on a waitlist with AWS-China to get setup with an AWS-China account for our China business. Now, I've had the AWS-China account for about 3 months and still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80 on a VM. No less, the time it took to get fully functioning companies in place to even be able to have a business account. It is a crazy struggle over here, but I guess if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Edit: forgot to mention that the solution also depends on my Chinese wife having her name on the ICP linense documents. It wouldn't even get done without that.
- BlackjackCF 10y ago
  Curious as to why you chose to go with AWS-China vs Ali's service?
- envy2 10y ago
  This feels more like "AWS problems" than "China problems." I was up and running on Aliyun in ~10 minutes, with a personal ICP license issued to me (a US citizen) in about 10 working days.
- envy2 10y ago
  This feels more like "AWS problems" than "China problems." I was up and running on Aliyun in ~10 minutes, with a personal ICP license issued to me (a US citizen) in about 10 working days.
- rsync 10y ago
  "still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80 on a VM." It is my understanding that things are much, much easier if you are not "publishing". That is, if you don't have a website or open port 80 (for instance) you can quickly and easily co-locate devices inside China - without any kind of license. Although we have not yet deployed rsync.net in mainland china (we have a location in Hong Kong) all of our contacts and partners were happy to rent us rackspace for non-publishing infrastructure - no licenses needed.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
The Chinese government actually has very little incentive to allow foreign internet companies inside China. By restricting outside companies they do the following 1. Reduce the ability of outsiders to influence their people 2. Avoid Arab Spring like events where because the companies are foreign, the coordinating network is opaque to the government 3. Allow the domestic internet companies a chance to grow and develop without competition from established foreign companies 4. Retain and develop talent and technology (ie big data, machine learning) domestically Because China has such a large population, they can easily develop and sustain their own internal internet industry without needing Western/American companies. I think the Snowden leaks showed that the Internet has been weaponized by the United States and having American companies controlling large services like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter gives the US government a massive trove of intelligence. It also enables them to influence citizens of other countries. I think a lot of countries in the near future will see the Internet as essential to their national security and thus try to limit foreign influence as much as they can with varying degrees of success
- csomar 10y ago
  > Because China has such a large population, they can easily develop and sustain their own internal internet industry without needing Western/American companies. Probably quite the opposite. Local internet business will rely on these restrictions to thrive rather than service, quality and features. They'll be shocked big when the market will open for foreign businesses.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Last time I checked, it was Google and Facebook that were shocked by the features and quality of Chinese services. In that shock, they proceeded to blindly copy them of course.
    - jahewson 10y ago
      That's a great point, except for it being entirely false.
    - 10y ago
rdiddly 10y ago
Biased article. Apparently some people can't grasp the fact that being isolated from the world is the least of China's worries.
- frozenport 10y ago
  The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade and technology transfer to China. Further, many companies are, in the present, heavily invested. While it might be the least of China's worries, it certainly should not be the least of ours.
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade and technology transfer to China. As a CxO, if you are going to meet the ever-rising quarterly growth target and all you've reached saturation in all your markets, you'll have to pander to China at some point soon. You aren't paid to worry about the long-term, the future CEO will deal with that. All you need to do is beat the street and keep the shareholders happy for the next quarter/FY.
coldcode 10y ago
Everyone want to be like China and control their internet, their people and their industry and avoid external competition. Most countries can't quite do it or are unwilling to because it does have downsides.
Jerry2 10y ago
I never understood why Western technology companies haven't taken China to a WTO tribunal for restricting their business practices. I mean, China exports trillions of dollars worth of goods to us yet when you try to export services to China, you're met with "The Golden Shield Project" aka "The Great Firewall of China". That doesn't seem like a fair deal at all.
- jza00425 10y ago
  You mean American tech companies. Stop playing this West vs China, It is just US.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    I think your tone is overly aggressive and accusatory. European countries have a large trade deficit with China (€170B)[1]. The U.S. had about double the amount of trade deficit ($336B), mostly due to its greater value of imports [2]. This doesn't prove that China restricts access to its markets by European companies, but it provides evidence that the situation may not be as simple as you suggest. 1. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-12072016-BP-EN.pdf/67bbb626-d55f-4032-8c24-48e4c9f78c3a http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-120... 2. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo...
    - jza00425 10y ago
      Trade deficit does not suggest anything. Whenever China tries to buy some technology, the US is so protective and at the same time buy all the clothes and low profit stuff. That is how you get the trade deficit. So it is pretty much that EU and US just keep Chinese work like slave forever. By the way, it is really just American tech companies. not a single european company's name pop up in my mind.
      - dmix 10y ago
        I can't bring a big European tech company to mind for any purpose not just this topic... there just hasn't been many influential consumer tech companies coming out of Europe recently that would have a big interest here. And as the article points out it's largely the consumer ones complaining here as the industry/government tech companies have already been under this level of regulatory scrutiny in the past, it's only new to consumer products. So your argument seems to be built on a faulty premise that the two geographic industries are comparable yet one is silent... one is largely silent for another reason.
nullnilvoid 10y ago
This reminds me of the Ming and Qing dynasty when the emperors decided to close the door and shut out foreigners. Gradually, China fell behind and the western powers bombed the door open during the opium war. It is unlikely that other countries will bomb open the door this time, as China is a great military power. Instead, it will be disbenefit to Chinese people and consumers as they cannot access the services from outside.
- jjoonathan 10y ago
  Maybe. It's certainly true that protectionist policies tend to destroy tons of economic value, but remember that "economic value" itself is a notion whose definition has been carefully cultivated to steer thought away from the weak bits of western economic theory (here: tragedies of the commons / damage to third parties outside each transaction). The sum total of consumer inconvenience caused by the Great Firewall could well be worth the economic self-sufficiency and industrial prowess it bought. There is value in laying a foundation today for tomorrow's competitive industries, but you won't see it until too late if you limit your thinking to the margin. Don't get me wrong, the GFW is also motivated by the corruption, censorship, and manipulation it enables, and I don't see a silver lining in any of those. I just wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the strategic value of protectionism.
  - nullnilvoid 10y ago
    The GFW is not so much motivated by protectionism but by CPC's tight grip on power and greed, to my understanding. If the CPC are adopting protectionism to cultivate their own tech industry, it is about time for them to loosen the Internet control because Chinese tech industry are very strong and established at this moment. It is unlikely for western counterparts to out-compete them in China market even on level playground. Among the top 10 most valuable Internet companies, China has four of them.
contingencies 10y ago
Utter crap. I have and continue to run companies inside of China, and have lived here on and off for 16 years. IMHO like most of the China-focused muck-slinging coming out of US media (increasingly frequently of late), this article lacks context and basically cries wolf over nothing concrete whatsoever. First it claims "required security checks on companies in industries like finance and communications, and mandatory in-country data storage". That's really no different to EU and US regulations. Anyway, if the journalist (who according to the dateline allegedly published from Hong Kong) had basic knowledge about mainland China, they would know that foreigners are largely barred from finance and communications-related business anyway (despite China committing to open finance when it joined the WTO). Finally, in China it's extremely common for new laws to be made (eg. "smoking inside is illegal") but absolutely zero enforcement to be done. (Edit in response to stupendous quantity of downvotes: Oh sorry for having an informed opinion instead of upvoting faux-journalism that agrees with ignorant anti-foreign sensibilities. The evil freedom-destroying communists are coming! Run for the hills!)

145 points by danielmorozoff 10y ago

One does not simply launch a website on a server inside of China. First, I had to wait about four months on a waitlist with AWS-China to get setup with an AWS-China account for our China business. Now, I've had the AWS-China account for about 3 months and still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80 on a VM. No less, the time it took to get fully functioning companies in place to even be able to have a business account. It is a crazy struggle over here, but I guess if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Edit: forgot to mention that the solution also depends on my Chinese wife having her name on the ICP linense documents. It wouldn't even get done without that.

BlackjackCF 10y ago
Curious as to why you chose to go with AWS-China vs Ali's service?
envy2 10y ago
This feels more like "AWS problems" than "China problems." I was up and running on Aliyun in ~10 minutes, with a personal ICP license issued to me (a US citizen) in about 10 working days.
envy2 10y ago
This feels more like "AWS problems" than "China problems." I was up and running on Aliyun in ~10 minutes, with a personal ICP license issued to me (a US citizen) in about 10 working days.
rsync 10y ago
"still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80 on a VM." It is my understanding that things are much, much easier if you are not "publishing". That is, if you don't have a website or open port 80 (for instance) you can quickly and easily co-locate devices inside China - without any kind of license. Although we have not yet deployed rsync.net in mainland china (we have a location in Hong Kong) all of our contacts and partners were happy to rent us rackspace for non-publishing infrastructure - no licenses needed.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago

The Chinese government actually has very little incentive to allow foreign internet companies inside China. By restricting outside companies they do the following 1. Reduce the ability of outsiders to influence their people 2. Avoid Arab Spring like events where because the companies are foreign, the coordinating network is opaque to the government 3. Allow the domestic internet companies a chance to grow and develop without competition from established foreign companies 4. Retain and develop talent and technology (ie big data, machine learning) domestically Because China has such a large population, they can easily develop and sustain their own internal internet industry without needing Western/American companies. I think the Snowden leaks showed that the Internet has been weaponized by the United States and having American companies controlling large services like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter gives the US government a massive trove of intelligence. It also enables them to influence citizens of other countries. I think a lot of countries in the near future will see the Internet as essential to their national security and thus try to limit foreign influence as much as they can with varying degrees of success

csomar 10y ago
> Because China has such a large population, they can easily develop and sustain their own internal internet industry without needing Western/American companies. Probably quite the opposite. Local internet business will rely on these restrictions to thrive rather than service, quality and features. They'll be shocked big when the market will open for foreign businesses.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Last time I checked, it was Google and Facebook that were shocked by the features and quality of Chinese services. In that shock, they proceeded to blindly copy them of course.
  - jahewson 10y ago
    That's a great point, except for it being entirely false.
  - 10y ago

rdiddly 10y ago

Biased article. Apparently some people can't grasp the fact that being isolated from the world is the least of China's worries.

frozenport 10y ago
The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade and technology transfer to China. Further, many companies are, in the present, heavily invested. While it might be the least of China's worries, it certainly should not be the least of ours.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade and technology transfer to China. As a CxO, if you are going to meet the ever-rising quarterly growth target and all you've reached saturation in all your markets, you'll have to pander to China at some point soon. You aren't paid to worry about the long-term, the future CEO will deal with that. All you need to do is beat the street and keep the shareholders happy for the next quarter/FY.

coldcode 10y ago

Everyone want to be like China and control their internet, their people and their industry and avoid external competition. Most countries can't quite do it or are unwilling to because it does have downsides.

Jerry2 10y ago

I never understood why Western technology companies haven't taken China to a WTO tribunal for restricting their business practices. I mean, China exports trillions of dollars worth of goods to us yet when you try to export services to China, you're met with "The Golden Shield Project" aka "The Great Firewall of China". That doesn't seem like a fair deal at all.

jza00425 10y ago
You mean American tech companies. Stop playing this West vs China, It is just US.
- linkregister 10y ago
  I think your tone is overly aggressive and accusatory. European countries have a large trade deficit with China (€170B)[1]. The U.S. had about double the amount of trade deficit ($336B), mostly due to its greater value of imports [2]. This doesn't prove that China restricts access to its markets by European companies, but it provides evidence that the situation may not be as simple as you suggest. 1. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-12072016-BP-EN.pdf/67bbb626-d55f-4032-8c24-48e4c9f78c3a http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-120... 2. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo...
  - jza00425 10y ago
    Trade deficit does not suggest anything. Whenever China tries to buy some technology, the US is so protective and at the same time buy all the clothes and low profit stuff. That is how you get the trade deficit. So it is pretty much that EU and US just keep Chinese work like slave forever. By the way, it is really just American tech companies. not a single european company's name pop up in my mind.
    - dmix 10y ago
      I can't bring a big European tech company to mind for any purpose not just this topic... there just hasn't been many influential consumer tech companies coming out of Europe recently that would have a big interest here. And as the article points out it's largely the consumer ones complaining here as the industry/government tech companies have already been under this level of regulatory scrutiny in the past, it's only new to consumer products. So your argument seems to be built on a faulty premise that the two geographic industries are comparable yet one is silent... one is largely silent for another reason.

nullnilvoid 10y ago

This reminds me of the Ming and Qing dynasty when the emperors decided to close the door and shut out foreigners. Gradually, China fell behind and the western powers bombed the door open during the opium war. It is unlikely that other countries will bomb open the door this time, as China is a great military power. Instead, it will be disbenefit to Chinese people and consumers as they cannot access the services from outside.

jjoonathan 10y ago
Maybe. It's certainly true that protectionist policies tend to destroy tons of economic value, but remember that "economic value" itself is a notion whose definition has been carefully cultivated to steer thought away from the weak bits of western economic theory (here: tragedies of the commons / damage to third parties outside each transaction). The sum total of consumer inconvenience caused by the Great Firewall could well be worth the economic self-sufficiency and industrial prowess it bought. There is value in laying a foundation today for tomorrow's competitive industries, but you won't see it until too late if you limit your thinking to the margin. Don't get me wrong, the GFW is also motivated by the corruption, censorship, and manipulation it enables, and I don't see a silver lining in any of those. I just wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the strategic value of protectionism.
- nullnilvoid 10y ago
  The GFW is not so much motivated by protectionism but by CPC's tight grip on power and greed, to my understanding. If the CPC are adopting protectionism to cultivate their own tech industry, it is about time for them to loosen the Internet control because Chinese tech industry are very strong and established at this moment. It is unlikely for western counterparts to out-compete them in China market even on level playground. Among the top 10 most valuable Internet companies, China has four of them.

contingencies 10y ago

Utter crap. I have and continue to run companies inside of China, and have lived here on and off for 16 years. IMHO like most of the China-focused muck-slinging coming out of US media (increasingly frequently of late), this article lacks context and basically cries wolf over nothing concrete whatsoever. First it claims "required security checks on companies in industries like finance and communications, and mandatory in-country data storage". That's really no different to EU and US regulations. Anyway, if the journalist (who according to the dateline allegedly published from Hong Kong) had basic knowledge about mainland China, they would know that foreigners are largely barred from finance and communications-related business anyway (despite China committing to open finance when it joined the WTO). Finally, in China it's extremely common for new laws to be made (eg. "smoking inside is illegal") but absolutely zero enforcement to be done. (Edit in response to stupendous quantity of downvotes: Oh sorry for having an informed opinion instead of upvoting faux-journalism that agrees with ignorant anti-foreign sensibilities. The evil freedom-destroying communists are coming! Run for the hills!)