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Like it or not, the GFW helped to created the "most dramatic periods of economic development" in Chinese history. Back in 2010, when Google chose to exit China

Like it or not, the GFW helped to created the "most dramatic periods of economic development" in Chinese history. Back in 2010, when Google chose to exit China, many argued the exact same that China is isolating itself from the outside. Such feeling is understandable from a western point of view, I mean for anyone from a western background there is simply no Internet if google/twitter/fb etc. are all unavailable. However, a bold however, 7 years after Google's exit from China, it has been proved again and again that the biggest motivation of GFW is the protectionism aiming to help domestic Internet companies - and that actually paid off pretty well. You don't need Google/fb/twitter etc to have booming Internet/high tech economy. Look at China's social media, online payment, e-commerce, online gaming, AI, shared economy etc, did China miss out. Let me give you a bloody simple number: I didn't use any cash or bank card/credit card in the last 45 days, everything, I mean 100% everything, was paid by mobile. This is not about some cheap nationalism - it is _all_ about how many good paying jobs can be made available in China for Chinese. It is the exact same as the Making America Great Again crap. Blocking google/fb/twitter was the first essential step to achieve that.

AzMoo_ 9y ago
Where are you in China? I just spent a week in a relatively small city in Shandong and there were so many places that were cash only. Couldn't even use card, let alone mobile.
- beisner 9y ago
  I just spent the last 6 weeks in Beijing and Shanghai (currently in Shanghai) and I have run into several places that don't even accept cash anymore, and only accept WeChat Pay or Alipay.
- dis-sys 9y ago
  I live in Shanghai. You can still see people paying cash here but mostly from those who don't use any tech/electronics. Not talking about big/fancy businesses, most street food vendors accept/encourage mobile payment, beggars are holding their printed QR code signs asking for changes paid by mobile.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gcb0 9y ago
  I think their point was that you will pay with mobile via chinese company apps instead of google pay or mastercard... not that places that are too remote for gpay or Mastercard will magically accept the facy new payments from the chinese companies.
68c12c16 9y ago
> Like it or not, the GFW helped to created the "most dramatic > periods of economic development" in Chinese history. Like it or not, several thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, slavery helped to build many great pyramids -- the "most dramatic periods of economic development" in ancient Egyptian history... > You don't need Google/fb/twitter etc to have > booming Internet/high tech economy. But one does need Google or duckduckgo to have a blooming mind in this age...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- furyg3 9y ago
  Slaves did not build the pyramids: http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-ht...
  - 68c12c16 9y ago
    touché... I did not know that before...thanks for sharing... But the whole point is about a fair income distribution in a society... If you think that as a Pharaoh, without contributing much to a society but could still get all the best things -- including the pyramids -- provided by the people in the country, by telling them that his ruling is god's will -- which does not seem to hold much truth in it...I just feel that this is not justifiable... This is a similar thing happening in China right now -- with all the propaganda and censorship and limitation on what people could read and talk at their own will, and hence influence the way people think and reason... If the pyramids were not built by slaves, then there were plenty of other magnificent monuments or grand palaces or great economic achievements that were the labor of masses of hard working coolies who never got what they really deserve...
    - dis-sys 9y ago
      First thing first, I didn't downvote you or anyone else - because I simply don't have enough karma to downvote anyone. Please check my public profile before pointing fingers, that would be a much more civilised move. I was educated in the west, with PhD from the top ranking university. I spent 12 years living in your society and do understand where you came from. The problem is you seem to be forcing your definition of freedom onto many people. You can value your free speech, your democratic system etc etc, I'd perfectly happy to respect that. However, it it seems that you refuse to even acknowledge the cultural differences widely observed. To give you a quick hint, majority vote is the preferred way in the west, but apparently Chinese and many Asian cultures value more on consensus based on compromises. Your arguments on "propaganda and censorship" are quite rude because you are basically arguing that Chinese living in China can not figure out what is truth and what is propaganda, you are basically suggesting that Chinese as a population of 1.4B can be easily manipulated. It is also extremely funny that someone who has never ever lived in China for long term is now jumping up and down lecturing people how bad is the situation in China. Tell me how this is not the definition of arrogance!
68c12c16 9y ago
Yes, like you are winning the argument by double down-voting my post without giving a word of reasoning...
- imron 9y ago
  You can't downvote people who reply to you, so more likely is that rather than being 'double downvoted' by someone, multiple people find your argument unpersuasive.
  - 68c12c16 9y ago
    thanks for giving me that information... Well, I noticed there had been a pattern for my multiple posts on this topic that, for several times, each time when a post was downvoted, it was double downvoted... So either it was a very synchronized move by several independent minds, or more likely, it was from a same mind who operates several accounts... Edit 1: I personally would not mind at all that any of my posts has been downvoted -- and if the person would like to provide any reasoning for his downvoting, then that would be better...After all, the whole point is not to win over your opponent but to find some thing that is closer to the truth and justice -- if there is any... But manipulating the visibility of other people's words by casting multiple downvotes by a same individual is sheer disgusting and does not make any sense to prove any point...as if that is a way of finding out truth and justice, then truth and justice would be equivalent to registering and manipulating more accounts than your opponents'...this reduces the human talent of reasoning to a series of steps of mechanical movement...it is a waste of his own life, as well as his audience's time...
    - aninhumer 9y ago
      I downvoted your initial post because, even if I don't think information restriction is right, I don't think it's on the same moral level as slavery. And additionally, modern archeologists don't believe the workers constructing the pyramids were slaves as such. They were citizens working for the state. In some theories, the arrangement is arguably a form of slavery, but I think we'd usually call the arrangement serfdom, and consider it differently in a historical context. And I downvoted your subsequent posts because I always downvote people complaining about downvotes. It's offtopic, and usually pointless.
mikeash 9y ago
This period of economic development got started with liberalization in the late 70s. The most you can say is that the GFW helped sustain it recently, and in skeptical of even that.
- dis-sys 9y ago
  What you mentioned is a typical misunderstanding. The economic liberalization didn't happen in most part of China until the 90s. For example, Shanghai didn't start until 1991, Beijing was another few years later than that. Even for those two first tier cities, many stuff considered normal in a market economy didn't happen until 10-15 years ago, e.g. buying a property to live in or for investment didn't become mainstream in Shanghai until 2003. I'd argue that GFW created millions of experienced software engineers for China. It is the assets required for such a developing country. If the market was dominated by Google/Twitter/Fb, how many of them are willing to have their core R&D positions in China? Let's make it no mistake - as a Chinese national, the company need to get your US export license to work on any project that involves stuff like encryption or high performance computing. That export license takes ages to get and there is no guarantee to get it. To send you to the US for meetings/training, you'd be subject to the Mantis Check managed by FBI, it can take anywhere between a few months to a few years to get a 12 months US short term visa. Now also consider how those companies do their taxes in foreign countries. How much they are going to contribute to the local economy? Just look at how other free countries are attacking their practices. http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-now-officially-has-a-google-tax-diverted-profits-tax-laws-pass-parliament-20170328-gv83va.html http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-now-off... If you consider all these, it will be clear that Chinese were pushed to the corner to defend the chance/right to develop their country/industry. For me, it is really a choice on whether to kill China's Internet industry or not. Chinese didn't kill it, they kicked out Google/Twitter/Fb etc and build their own Baidu/Alibaba/Tencent/JD/Didi/360, that is all.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    I don't see how what I said is a misunderstanding or how these facts support your claim. China's GDP growth has been high for 40 years. There's no possible way that the GFW created this, given that it wasn't around until about halfway through this period. Even if you say that it somehow doesn't count until the 90s, it still doesn't line up, since the GFW started out as purely political censorship and they weren't wholesale blocking foreign competitors until well into the 2000s.

AzMoo_ 9y ago

Where are you in China? I just spent a week in a relatively small city in Shandong and there were so many places that were cash only. Couldn't even use card, let alone mobile.

beisner 9y ago
I just spent the last 6 weeks in Beijing and Shanghai (currently in Shanghai) and I have run into several places that don't even accept cash anymore, and only accept WeChat Pay or Alipay.
dis-sys 9y ago
I live in Shanghai. You can still see people paying cash here but mostly from those who don't use any tech/electronics. Not talking about big/fancy businesses, most street food vendors accept/encourage mobile payment, beggars are holding their printed QR code signs asking for changes paid by mobile.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gcb0 9y ago
I think their point was that you will pay with mobile via chinese company apps instead of google pay or mastercard... not that places that are too remote for gpay or Mastercard will magically accept the facy new payments from the chinese companies.

68c12c16 9y ago

> Like it or not, the GFW helped to created the "most dramatic > periods of economic development" in Chinese history. Like it or not, several thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, slavery helped to build many great pyramids -- the "most dramatic periods of economic development" in ancient Egyptian history... > You don't need Google/fb/twitter etc to have > booming Internet/high tech economy. But one does need Google or duckduckgo to have a blooming mind in this age...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
furyg3 9y ago
Slaves did not build the pyramids: http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-ht...
- 68c12c16 9y ago
  touché... I did not know that before...thanks for sharing... But the whole point is about a fair income distribution in a society... If you think that as a Pharaoh, without contributing much to a society but could still get all the best things -- including the pyramids -- provided by the people in the country, by telling them that his ruling is god's will -- which does not seem to hold much truth in it...I just feel that this is not justifiable... This is a similar thing happening in China right now -- with all the propaganda and censorship and limitation on what people could read and talk at their own will, and hence influence the way people think and reason... If the pyramids were not built by slaves, then there were plenty of other magnificent monuments or grand palaces or great economic achievements that were the labor of masses of hard working coolies who never got what they really deserve...
  - dis-sys 9y ago
    First thing first, I didn't downvote you or anyone else - because I simply don't have enough karma to downvote anyone. Please check my public profile before pointing fingers, that would be a much more civilised move. I was educated in the west, with PhD from the top ranking university. I spent 12 years living in your society and do understand where you came from. The problem is you seem to be forcing your definition of freedom onto many people. You can value your free speech, your democratic system etc etc, I'd perfectly happy to respect that. However, it it seems that you refuse to even acknowledge the cultural differences widely observed. To give you a quick hint, majority vote is the preferred way in the west, but apparently Chinese and many Asian cultures value more on consensus based on compromises. Your arguments on "propaganda and censorship" are quite rude because you are basically arguing that Chinese living in China can not figure out what is truth and what is propaganda, you are basically suggesting that Chinese as a population of 1.4B can be easily manipulated. It is also extremely funny that someone who has never ever lived in China for long term is now jumping up and down lecturing people how bad is the situation in China. Tell me how this is not the definition of arrogance!

68c12c16 9y ago

Yes, like you are winning the argument by double down-voting my post without giving a word of reasoning...

imron 9y ago
You can't downvote people who reply to you, so more likely is that rather than being 'double downvoted' by someone, multiple people find your argument unpersuasive.
- 68c12c16 9y ago
  thanks for giving me that information... Well, I noticed there had been a pattern for my multiple posts on this topic that, for several times, each time when a post was downvoted, it was double downvoted... So either it was a very synchronized move by several independent minds, or more likely, it was from a same mind who operates several accounts... Edit 1: I personally would not mind at all that any of my posts has been downvoted -- and if the person would like to provide any reasoning for his downvoting, then that would be better...After all, the whole point is not to win over your opponent but to find some thing that is closer to the truth and justice -- if there is any... But manipulating the visibility of other people's words by casting multiple downvotes by a same individual is sheer disgusting and does not make any sense to prove any point...as if that is a way of finding out truth and justice, then truth and justice would be equivalent to registering and manipulating more accounts than your opponents'...this reduces the human talent of reasoning to a series of steps of mechanical movement...it is a waste of his own life, as well as his audience's time...
  - aninhumer 9y ago
    I downvoted your initial post because, even if I don't think information restriction is right, I don't think it's on the same moral level as slavery. And additionally, modern archeologists don't believe the workers constructing the pyramids were slaves as such. They were citizens working for the state. In some theories, the arrangement is arguably a form of slavery, but I think we'd usually call the arrangement serfdom, and consider it differently in a historical context. And I downvoted your subsequent posts because I always downvote people complaining about downvotes. It's offtopic, and usually pointless.

mikeash 9y ago

This period of economic development got started with liberalization in the late 70s. The most you can say is that the GFW helped sustain it recently, and in skeptical of even that.

dis-sys 9y ago
What you mentioned is a typical misunderstanding. The economic liberalization didn't happen in most part of China until the 90s. For example, Shanghai didn't start until 1991, Beijing was another few years later than that. Even for those two first tier cities, many stuff considered normal in a market economy didn't happen until 10-15 years ago, e.g. buying a property to live in or for investment didn't become mainstream in Shanghai until 2003. I'd argue that GFW created millions of experienced software engineers for China. It is the assets required for such a developing country. If the market was dominated by Google/Twitter/Fb, how many of them are willing to have their core R&D positions in China? Let's make it no mistake - as a Chinese national, the company need to get your US export license to work on any project that involves stuff like encryption or high performance computing. That export license takes ages to get and there is no guarantee to get it. To send you to the US for meetings/training, you'd be subject to the Mantis Check managed by FBI, it can take anywhere between a few months to a few years to get a 12 months US short term visa. Now also consider how those companies do their taxes in foreign countries. How much they are going to contribute to the local economy? Just look at how other free countries are attacking their practices. http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-now-officially-has-a-google-tax-diverted-profits-tax-laws-pass-parliament-20170328-gv83va.html http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-now-off... If you consider all these, it will be clear that Chinese were pushed to the corner to defend the chance/right to develop their country/industry. For me, it is really a choice on whether to kill China's Internet industry or not. Chinese didn't kill it, they kicked out Google/Twitter/Fb etc and build their own Baidu/Alibaba/Tencent/JD/Didi/360, that is all.
- mikeash 9y ago
  I don't see how what I said is a misunderstanding or how these facts support your claim. China's GDP growth has been high for 40 years. There's no possible way that the GFW created this, given that it wasn't around until about halfway through this period. Even if you say that it somehow doesn't count until the 90s, it still doesn't line up, since the GFW started out as purely political censorship and they weren't wholesale blocking foreign competitors until well into the 2000s.