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>the technical details of how the Chinese government manage the internet This is a very broad topic that require several books to cover, but I will try to outl

>the technical details of how the Chinese government manage the internet This is a very broad topic that require several books to cover, but I will try to outline the more prominent features in a short few paragraphs. Before I start, it's important to point out that in a authoritarian state like China, laws are often deliberately made very strict but only loosely enforced. In time, everyone is likely to have already committed some crime as a matter of necessity and thus nobody is safe from the law; the constant threat of law enforcement make people fear the authorities. Every website serving users in China needs to apply and hold an ICP license[0]. Without a license, no hosting company will do business with you and your domain name run the risk of getting blacklisted if you decide to host it on a foreign server instead. If you have an established online presence, it is in your best interest to avoid anything transgressions that might result in the loss of your license, including but not limited to: - Hosting illegal content - Not promptly deleting content at the request of authorities - Not complying with any of the cyber security laws Additional permits are required if the website hosts music/video, publish games or offer money handling services. These permits are often intentionally kept scarce to make the industries more restrictive and compliant. As for internet users, every service they use require an account tied to their real ID. This is usually done by registering a mobile phone number which is technically always tied to a real identity. Public internet access also require phone verification to access. Therefore anything posted to the internet can theoretically be traced back to its author. >How often do people actually get into trouble for their internet usage? This is a really tricky question. Because of all the issues I mentioned above, service providers are strongly incentivized to practice self censorship. Thus a lot of contentious stuff people say will disappear before the authorities gets involved, especially if they are on the open web. Over at the more closed platforms such as WeChat the standards are somewhat relaxed, but from time to time people do get in trouble for what they post. In any case it's hard to tell because the standards being used to judge your words are in a constant state of flux. What happens after that really depends on where you live. In large cities, the police have more real problems to deal with and are subject to more oversight, so they tend to turn a blind eye except for the most blatantly seditious messages. And even in the latter case most people are let go after a formal warning without much consequence. Small town cops, on the other hand, are a lot more eager to seek prosecution, especially if they are corrupt or have a personal vendetta against you. Conflict zones like Xinjiang are the worst because they are under effective martial law, so anything remotely out of the line will get a follow-up. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license

mercer 8y ago
> Before I start, it's important to point out that in a authoritarian state like China, laws are often deliberately made very strict but only loosely enforced. as a complete sidenote, aside from your excellent comment, I'd like to point out that this is true in 'The West' too. EDIT: Let me give a specific example in my home country (The Netherlands). Weed is 'tolerated', but not legalized. You might feel free: you can buy weed at coffeeshops, even smoke it in front of a cop but it's still illegal. Woe is you when you smoke it with any regularity and drive a car! If for some reason you're stopped for 'erratic behavior' in traffic, you can be submitted to a saliva test. Depending on your online sources, these can tell whether you've smoked weed in at least the past 24 hours. But when the cops are not friendly, they can make you take a blood/urine test, in which use of weed can be detected for up to 3 months, chronic or otherwise, at least. What this means is that in The Netherlands, which weirdly is often seen as a laissez-faire place to smoke, you can be caught as a 'drug user' even if you've not smoked 3 months after your last joint. What happens next is that your license is revoked, you might be imprisoned, and for the next year or so you need to take various tests to prove that you're safe on the road, and you might have to talk to a psychiatrist. Costs very well might exceed 1000 euro for all of this. To be clear, if you never smoke weed, and light up once, you'll be safe after about 24 hours. But any usage beyond that puts you into a murky world that potentially leads to all of the aforementioned, no nuance. My point is that is 'authoritarian' has quite a few dimensions, and even a 'liberal', 'western' country like The Netherlands is quite authoritarian from certain perspectives. That's not to diminish what you're saying about China, but just something to keep in mind.
- Laforet 8y ago
  Thanks for the comment. Maybe I am reading it wrong, but what you described sounds rather reasonable to me. After all, marijuana does impair one's ability to drive[0]. The traffic laws may be a bit draconian but I find it hard to argue against it in principle. To give you a related, and hopefully less political example: People who suffer from epilepsy in my country are technically disqualified from driving for 12 months after a major seizure. In that event their affliction is probably not controlled by medicine and there is a chance that they might start seizing behind the wheel. An unintended consequence of the law is that epileptics would go to great lengths to hide the extent of their condition for the fear of losing their driving priviledge. It's not uncommon for epileptics to lie to doctors, or even refuse to go to a hospital after an ambulance has been called for them, just so an episode could remain off the book. Some might be doing it for vain reasons, but there is also a good number of patients who cannot afford to lose their license as their job security may depend on it. The balance between public safety and personal freedom is never easy. [0]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/600655/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/600655/

mercer 8y ago

> Before I start, it's important to point out that in a authoritarian state like China, laws are often deliberately made very strict but only loosely enforced. as a complete sidenote, aside from your excellent comment, I'd like to point out that this is true in 'The West' too. EDIT: Let me give a specific example in my home country (The Netherlands). Weed is 'tolerated', but not legalized. You might feel free: you can buy weed at coffeeshops, even smoke it in front of a cop but it's still illegal. Woe is you when you smoke it with any regularity and drive a car! If for some reason you're stopped for 'erratic behavior' in traffic, you can be submitted to a saliva test. Depending on your online sources, these can tell whether you've smoked weed in at least the past 24 hours. But when the cops are not friendly, they can make you take a blood/urine test, in which use of weed can be detected for up to 3 months, chronic or otherwise, at least. What this means is that in The Netherlands, which weirdly is often seen as a laissez-faire place to smoke, you can be caught as a 'drug user' even if you've not smoked 3 months after your last joint. What happens next is that your license is revoked, you might be imprisoned, and for the next year or so you need to take various tests to prove that you're safe on the road, and you might have to talk to a psychiatrist. Costs very well might exceed 1000 euro for all of this. To be clear, if you never smoke weed, and light up once, you'll be safe after about 24 hours. But any usage beyond that puts you into a murky world that potentially leads to all of the aforementioned, no nuance. My point is that is 'authoritarian' has quite a few dimensions, and even a 'liberal', 'western' country like The Netherlands is quite authoritarian from certain perspectives. That's not to diminish what you're saying about China, but just something to keep in mind.

Laforet 8y ago
Thanks for the comment. Maybe I am reading it wrong, but what you described sounds rather reasonable to me. After all, marijuana does impair one's ability to drive[0]. The traffic laws may be a bit draconian but I find it hard to argue against it in principle. To give you a related, and hopefully less political example: People who suffer from epilepsy in my country are technically disqualified from driving for 12 months after a major seizure. In that event their affliction is probably not controlled by medicine and there is a chance that they might start seizing behind the wheel. An unintended consequence of the law is that epileptics would go to great lengths to hide the extent of their condition for the fear of losing their driving priviledge. It's not uncommon for epileptics to lie to doctors, or even refuse to go to a hospital after an ambulance has been called for them, just so an episode could remain off the book. Some might be doing it for vain reasons, but there is also a good number of patients who cannot afford to lose their license as their job security may depend on it. The balance between public safety and personal freedom is never easy. [0]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/600655/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/600655/