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That's not what I'm saying... The censorship is already there, and the government is hard to pressure. What I'm saying is that blocking VPNs will make more peo

That's not what I'm saying... The censorship is already there, and the government is hard to pressure. What I'm saying is that blocking VPNs will make more people put pressure on the government. Right now there is very little pressure, so they can get away with it. Can they get away with it if a large percentage of highly educated and well connected people are very strongly opposed to it and can't do their jobs properly?

zzzcpan 9y ago
There will be even less pressure once those highly educated get censored too.
OnlineCourage 9y ago
> Can they get away with it if a large percentage of highly educated and well connected people are very strongly opposed to it and can't do their jobs properly? Well, Mao certainly could during the cultural revolution.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Not repeating the cultural revolution is one of the top priorities of the Chinese government now.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  >Well, Mao certainly could during the cultural revolution. Political conditions were very different during the cultural revolution than they are now.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Look at GDP graphs for China, and you can see very clearly when the political upheavals ended and business got a stable, predictable regime to deal with (look at GDP graphs in general, and it quickly becomes clear that stability matters much more than the specifics of the economic or political system) The Chinese government has demonstrated very clearly over the last few decades that it is more concerned about maintaining economic growth than about maintaining "ideological purity".
nine_k 9y ago
OK, the government might say, here's a wad of money for you to create replacement, so that we don't miss these outside-GFW resources anymore. Of course, the money would go to those capable and loyal enough to actually try and make something. It could be used to both decrease the objective dependence on the politically dangerous but important outside-GFW resources, and bring enough rivalry between the less loyal for the access to the government grants to weaken any latent opposition. As far as I understand, GFW does not block all access; it blocks politically-sensitive access. There's plenty scientific / engineering / whatever resources on the Internet that don't carry political messages, and don't try to. I bet effectively indexing and censoring the outside-GFW internet is a viable task for China's IT. It does not need to be as good as Google; it needs to just be OK to allow the important R&D to continue.
- zhemao 9y ago
  It's not just the technical services those platforms provide, but also the content hosted on them and the other users who use them. The article mentions Dropbox and Google Drive. Even if a Chinese file-sharing service was created as a replacement, good luck convincing foreign collaborators to use it. Also blocked are YouTube and Twitter, which are great platforms for promoting your work to a global audience. I just don't see the Chinese government handicapping their researchers this way just for some extra control. What's more likely is they'll work out a deal with trusted universities and corporations to give their employees access to an official VPN through which they can get unrestricted internet access. But all traffic through this VPN will be closely monitored.
  - baybal2 9y ago
    There is no such thing as an "official VPN"
  - nine_k 9y ago
    I don't see why getting certain videos whitelisted and proxied through an official site or GFW directly would not be viable. Same for twitter: send your tweets via an approved gateway, get them reviewed an pushed to Twitter, get pre-censored retweets as they appear and get approved. Make the international voice of the PRC researchers official-only, Soviet-style. With corporations, it's harder. But for each "we don't trust your servers" from a Western corp side there could be a symmetric "we don't trust your servers" from Chinese side. The resolution depends on who needs the other side more; I bet that in most cases it would be Western corporations giving in.

zzzcpan 9y ago

There will be even less pressure once those highly educated get censored too.

OnlineCourage 9y ago

> Can they get away with it if a large percentage of highly educated and well connected people are very strongly opposed to it and can't do their jobs properly? Well, Mao certainly could during the cultural revolution.

mikeash 9y ago
Not repeating the cultural revolution is one of the top priorities of the Chinese government now.
cpncrunch 9y ago
>Well, Mao certainly could during the cultural revolution. Political conditions were very different during the cultural revolution than they are now.
vidarh 9y ago
Look at GDP graphs for China, and you can see very clearly when the political upheavals ended and business got a stable, predictable regime to deal with (look at GDP graphs in general, and it quickly becomes clear that stability matters much more than the specifics of the economic or political system) The Chinese government has demonstrated very clearly over the last few decades that it is more concerned about maintaining economic growth than about maintaining "ideological purity".

nine_k 9y ago

OK, the government might say, here's a wad of money for you to create replacement, so that we don't miss these outside-GFW resources anymore. Of course, the money would go to those capable and loyal enough to actually try and make something. It could be used to both decrease the objective dependence on the politically dangerous but important outside-GFW resources, and bring enough rivalry between the less loyal for the access to the government grants to weaken any latent opposition. As far as I understand, GFW does not block all access; it blocks politically-sensitive access. There's plenty scientific / engineering / whatever resources on the Internet that don't carry political messages, and don't try to. I bet effectively indexing and censoring the outside-GFW internet is a viable task for China's IT. It does not need to be as good as Google; it needs to just be OK to allow the important R&D to continue.

zhemao 9y ago
It's not just the technical services those platforms provide, but also the content hosted on them and the other users who use them. The article mentions Dropbox and Google Drive. Even if a Chinese file-sharing service was created as a replacement, good luck convincing foreign collaborators to use it. Also blocked are YouTube and Twitter, which are great platforms for promoting your work to a global audience. I just don't see the Chinese government handicapping their researchers this way just for some extra control. What's more likely is they'll work out a deal with trusted universities and corporations to give their employees access to an official VPN through which they can get unrestricted internet access. But all traffic through this VPN will be closely monitored.
- baybal2 9y ago
  There is no such thing as an "official VPN"
- nine_k 9y ago
  I don't see why getting certain videos whitelisted and proxied through an official site or GFW directly would not be viable. Same for twitter: send your tweets via an approved gateway, get them reviewed an pushed to Twitter, get pre-censored retweets as they appear and get approved. Make the international voice of the PRC researchers official-only, Soviet-style. With corporations, it's harder. But for each "we don't trust your servers" from a Western corp side there could be a symmetric "we don't trust your servers" from Chinese side. The resolution depends on who needs the other side more; I bet that in most cases it would be Western corporations giving in.