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> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Then why take the trouble of blocking something so

> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) > eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector Doesn't China have bigger aspirations than just the mainland? People are missing the bigger point. I'm not talking about the current state of things. This is about the future. Most things are derivatives of other things. It's much harder to create these derivatives without easy access to free flowing data. People are saying, "It's fine, Chinese students just study and work in the West and bring it back to China after a few years." This is extremely inefficient. 1. there's the monetary cost involved compared to a open internet connection2. only a very small portion of the population will have this opportunity compared to potentially millions more with an open internet connection. 3. the amount of time it will take for this data to come back to China is huge compared to the instantaneous sharing you get with an open internet connection Getting more control isn't free, the price is growth.

twelvechairs 9y ago
> Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) China would rather be in control of tracking/surveillance internally, rather than let it be done by foreign companies and nations. Thats all
- pertymcpert 9y ago
  WhatsApp doesn't do surveillance, it's end to end encrypted. Foreign surveillance is not the reason they block these services and you know it.
  - twelvechairs 9y ago
    China wants their own surveillance. Regardless of what you think of Whatsapp's encryption or the US govs potential to break it.
  - miopa 9y ago
    WhatsApp knows your contacts and when are you talking with whom. Also their closed source app has access to most of your phone.
dreamfactored 9y ago
1. These are foreign-owned infrastructure platforms and China is protective about its markets. Foreigners can't set up businesses of any kind, let alone infrastructure. 2. You seem to assume the bulk of innovation is going to be happening outside China and that blocking consumer access to Western platforms would somehow inhibit a flow of information to China. I'd disagree on both counts. The Chinese government is acting as the word's biggest VC and is also very practised and willing to take on long-term transformation plans at the national level. Shutting down foreign platforms only drives adoption of home-grown ones. In addition, they are explicitly targeting a future position as the world leader in AI. In the West I'd be betting on the MIC over individual privately owned companies to put any kind of dent in that ambition. I think any moment where Apple or Google alone could outspend and outcompete China in tech is gone.
- chaostheory 9y ago
  1. My question was rhetorical. It was in response to someone saying that apps outside of China are unimportant and small. 2. No single country has a monopoly on innovation. Consequently the sharing of ideas from different locations and cultures is really important for moving forward. You miss out on this benefit when you consciously work to block it. Historically, the last time China was this arrogant about isolation, it didn't turn out too well. Last Update: I've wasted enough time on this and probably should have put this in my original post. If you think of sharing data as a resource, China just made it artificially scarce, made it extremely slow, and made it really costly which makes total business sense in the Information Age /s Hopefully our governments won't follow
  - ebola1717 9y ago
    China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu! They are isolating data, but hoarding data is a competitive advantage in a way that isolating knowledge isn't.
    - chaostheory 9y ago
      > China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu! Ok they are bottlenecking data... As I've already mentioned this is an extremely inefficient way to share data. Sharing data using physically present word of mouth is a lot more expensive and slower than sharing it instantly via an open internet connection.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Innovation is a lot harder if you've grown up with someone looking over your shoulder all the time. I think we're going to pay that price, and that China will be more affected. The times of real progress in human history are few, the stagnant centuries are plentiful. But we'll see. Snowden ain't coming home any time soon.
kbart 9y ago
Russia has had an unrestricted Internet access until recently. I still don't see booming tech sector (or actually, any) there or people revolting against authoritarian government. There's language and cultural barrier that must be taken into account -- free access to information won't do much if people still prefer their information and social bubbles and actively maintain them. Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones, even though they can access these too.
- MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  What about Yandex and vk?
  - kbart 9y ago
    That's what I meant by writing: "Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones". vk == Facebook, Yandex == Google.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      And by having that, they are better off than Europeans, who have nothing. Instead, they add their weight to the network effects of US services.
      - seppin 9y ago
        Of services that actually benefit from global outreach, like Facebook. Local companies (clones of Uber) do very well
    - dahauns 9y ago
      C'mon. Yandex is older than Google. It's short-sighted and actually rather arrogant to see those platforms like "look at them, how cute, they're playing information society like the grown-ups!".
westiseast 9y ago
> It's much harder to create these derivatives without easy access to free flowing data. The data is free flowing enough within China though - that's the bigger point ;) It's not as if you turn off the access to Western information* and suddenly you've got a room full of Chinese developers and entrepreneurs awkwardly twiddling their thumbs - there's enough critical mass within Chinese markets to create the kind of 'daily innovation' without much input from outside. Genuinely, massively disruptive innovation has always crossed over, and will continue to do so unless something drastically worse happens with censorship/politics. *EDIT: plus blocking WhatsApp won't actually restrict meaningful foreign information crossing the borders - all it will do is make it difficult for dissidents to hide their online conversations, and piss off Chinese business people who need WhatsApp to converse with foreign clients.
- freeflight 9y ago
  > Genuinely, massively disruptive innovation has always crossed over, and will continue to do so unless something drastically worse happens with censorship/politics. Some would argue that it doesn't even need to cross over because multiple discovery is an actual thing with plenty of historical precedence [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries
simonh 9y ago
>> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers >Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) Because they don’t want local activists to be able to use it as a secure channel for communications. WhatsApp really is irrelevant to the market, but access to secure private communications is politically intolerable to the government.
avcdsuia 9y ago
I think you are right. I am a Chinese netizen, and I find popular trends in tech areas like new deep learning papers have lags to be posted in Chinese tech communities. People who don't know arxiv.org or can't read English well tend to get news and knowledge from WeChat official accounts. Just a few weeks ago, people get arrested for using Shadowsocks, they were ordered to delete the proxy software and make commitments about not using tools to bypass the great firewall. The gov is clearly getting more control, but when will they hit the price threshold? Will they stop when they know they are in a dilemma? Which side will they choose? That are questions we Chinese still can't answer.

twelvechairs 9y ago

> Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) China would rather be in control of tracking/surveillance internally, rather than let it be done by foreign companies and nations. Thats all

pertymcpert 9y ago
WhatsApp doesn't do surveillance, it's end to end encrypted. Foreign surveillance is not the reason they block these services and you know it.
- twelvechairs 9y ago
  China wants their own surveillance. Regardless of what you think of Whatsapp's encryption or the US govs potential to break it.
- miopa 9y ago
  WhatsApp knows your contacts and when are you talking with whom. Also their closed source app has access to most of your phone.

dreamfactored 9y ago

1. These are foreign-owned infrastructure platforms and China is protective about its markets. Foreigners can't set up businesses of any kind, let alone infrastructure. 2. You seem to assume the bulk of innovation is going to be happening outside China and that blocking consumer access to Western platforms would somehow inhibit a flow of information to China. I'd disagree on both counts. The Chinese government is acting as the word's biggest VC and is also very practised and willing to take on long-term transformation plans at the national level. Shutting down foreign platforms only drives adoption of home-grown ones. In addition, they are explicitly targeting a future position as the world leader in AI. In the West I'd be betting on the MIC over individual privately owned companies to put any kind of dent in that ambition. I think any moment where Apple or Google alone could outspend and outcompete China in tech is gone.

chaostheory 9y ago
1. My question was rhetorical. It was in response to someone saying that apps outside of China are unimportant and small. 2. No single country has a monopoly on innovation. Consequently the sharing of ideas from different locations and cultures is really important for moving forward. You miss out on this benefit when you consciously work to block it. Historically, the last time China was this arrogant about isolation, it didn't turn out too well. Last Update: I've wasted enough time on this and probably should have put this in my original post. If you think of sharing data as a resource, China just made it artificially scarce, made it extremely slow, and made it really costly which makes total business sense in the Information Age /s Hopefully our governments won't follow
- ebola1717 9y ago
  China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu! They are isolating data, but hoarding data is a competitive advantage in a way that isolating knowledge isn't.
  - chaostheory 9y ago
    > China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu! Ok they are bottlenecking data... As I've already mentioned this is an extremely inefficient way to share data. Sharing data using physically present word of mouth is a lot more expensive and slower than sharing it instantly via an open internet connection.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Innovation is a lot harder if you've grown up with someone looking over your shoulder all the time. I think we're going to pay that price, and that China will be more affected. The times of real progress in human history are few, the stagnant centuries are plentiful. But we'll see. Snowden ain't coming home any time soon.

kbart 9y ago

Russia has had an unrestricted Internet access until recently. I still don't see booming tech sector (or actually, any) there or people revolting against authoritarian government. There's language and cultural barrier that must be taken into account -- free access to information won't do much if people still prefer their information and social bubbles and actively maintain them. Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones, even though they can access these too.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago
What about Yandex and vk?
- kbart 9y ago
  That's what I meant by writing: "Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones". vk == Facebook, Yandex == Google.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    And by having that, they are better off than Europeans, who have nothing. Instead, they add their weight to the network effects of US services.
    - seppin 9y ago
      Of services that actually benefit from global outreach, like Facebook. Local companies (clones of Uber) do very well
  - dahauns 9y ago
    C'mon. Yandex is older than Google. It's short-sighted and actually rather arrogant to see those platforms like "look at them, how cute, they're playing information society like the grown-ups!".

westiseast 9y ago

> It's much harder to create these derivatives without easy access to free flowing data. The data is free flowing enough within China though - that's the bigger point ;) It's not as if you turn off the access to Western information* and suddenly you've got a room full of Chinese developers and entrepreneurs awkwardly twiddling their thumbs - there's enough critical mass within Chinese markets to create the kind of 'daily innovation' without much input from outside. Genuinely, massively disruptive innovation has always crossed over, and will continue to do so unless something drastically worse happens with censorship/politics. *EDIT: plus blocking WhatsApp won't actually restrict meaningful foreign information crossing the borders - all it will do is make it difficult for dissidents to hide their online conversations, and piss off Chinese business people who need WhatsApp to converse with foreign clients.

freeflight 9y ago
> Genuinely, massively disruptive innovation has always crossed over, and will continue to do so unless something drastically worse happens with censorship/politics. Some would argue that it doesn't even need to cross over because multiple discovery is an actual thing with plenty of historical precedence [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries

simonh 9y ago

>> I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers >Then why take the trouble of blocking something so small and unimportant? ;) Because they don’t want local activists to be able to use it as a secure channel for communications. WhatsApp really is irrelevant to the market, but access to secure private communications is politically intolerable to the government.

avcdsuia 9y ago

I think you are right. I am a Chinese netizen, and I find popular trends in tech areas like new deep learning papers have lags to be posted in Chinese tech communities. People who don't know arxiv.org or can't read English well tend to get news and knowledge from WeChat official accounts. Just a few weeks ago, people get arrested for using Shadowsocks, they were ordered to delete the proxy software and make commitments about not using tools to bypass the great firewall. The gov is clearly getting more control, but when will they hit the price threshold? Will they stop when they know they are in a dilemma? Which side will they choose? That are questions we Chinese still can't answer.