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> Internet companies can go west but not east. Also native Chinese here. I do not quite agree with your view on that. Yes, Facebook and Google were censored in

> Internet companies can go west but not east. Also native Chinese here. I do not quite agree with your view on that. Yes, Facebook and Google were censored in China, but were eBay and Amazon blocked in China? Neither of them found a way to do business well in the China market. I'm totally against censorship, too. But blaming all things on the GFW is unreasonable to me. I think the reason here is that most educated Chinese people CAN speak, or at least read, simple English, while very few western people can speak Chinese. Getting into a market that speaks a language you understand is much easier than getting into a market with different language. Everything invented in the silicon valley will be shared and discussed in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen in almost no time. There are even Weibo accounts just reposting HN headlines, arxiv papers, etc. Each of these accounts has a huge amount of followers. How many westerns can read Chinese and know what is happening right now in China? China is far behind the western world when it comes to science and technology, but with a 1.4 billion population, I'm sure there are a few great ideas. However, westerners are hard to get them not because of the "closeness" of the east, but for the language barriers. When I see a technical post on HN, the comments are always meaningful and profound. But the comments in political posts are often too simple, sometimes even naïve. I wish we could think as hard as we do when discuss the newest technologies.

schuke 5y ago
Too simple, sometimes naïve. I see what your did there ;) I pointed out GFW as one example, and actually agree with you that it’s not the only reason exchanges are so limited. However, I do notice that examples of failed Western attempts to penetrate China usually stops at Amazon and eBay: after these, popular platforms have been so pro-actively blocked that it’s impossible to know what outcome would be if they were given to chance to freely compete. And the internet turned social, which in nature runs against the Party’s grip on speech.
- bingbong70 5y ago
  I personally think the GFW is a good thing, for now, that other developing countries may have an interest in copying. Free flowing mass communication in nations without fully developed public (security) services can be a disaster... the conflicts (and even genocides) that arose from poorer countries adopting FB come to mind. Also a foreign entity with suspicious partners having direct access to naive citizens around the world should be viewed as an attack vector especially if the locally accepted values don't match those of foreign entity.
fomine3 5y ago
You can argue same thing for Korean/Japanese, but they have no GFW.

schuke 5y ago

Too simple, sometimes naïve. I see what your did there ;) I pointed out GFW as one example, and actually agree with you that it’s not the only reason exchanges are so limited. However, I do notice that examples of failed Western attempts to penetrate China usually stops at Amazon and eBay: after these, popular platforms have been so pro-actively blocked that it’s impossible to know what outcome would be if they were given to chance to freely compete. And the internet turned social, which in nature runs against the Party’s grip on speech.

bingbong70 5y ago
I personally think the GFW is a good thing, for now, that other developing countries may have an interest in copying. Free flowing mass communication in nations without fully developed public (security) services can be a disaster... the conflicts (and even genocides) that arose from poorer countries adopting FB come to mind. Also a foreign entity with suspicious partners having direct access to naive citizens around the world should be viewed as an attack vector especially if the locally accepted values don't match those of foreign entity.

fomine3 5y ago

You can argue same thing for Korean/Japanese, but they have no GFW.