7 ms·

China Clamps Down on Web, Pinching Companies Like Google

63 points by digital55 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago
This isn't really news is it? Putin and Xi both defining what is and isn't allowed to be shared/said/stored in machines on their soil. The next step can start pretty much at any point, its going to look like the old ARPAnet, where a set of protocols, defined by group sharing a common interest in communication, creates a network that empowers new work and new industry. Back in the 70's the big issues were bandwidth and signalling technology, today the big issues are interference from the government. But from an engineering standpoint its just getting signal through the noise. As I mentioned earlier, UUCP through Tor has a lot of potential for creating a pretty decent source routed email network without central control. Add homomorphic encryption on routing/packet management and you have the basis for building the first network within the network.
- chj 12y ago
  Actually it is a universal problem. Anything that involves a central server or a legal representative will be under government control.
- dengnan 12y ago
  Tor does not work in China. Since their servers' addresses are publicly available, it is quite easy to block. To access real Internet inChina, it is not only about encryption, nor anonymity. you have to hide the fact that you are accessing a foreign server. GFW has this feature: if a node inside GFW access a foreign address too long/frequently, the foreign address will be temporary blocked. This is a very rude but powerful feature.
- 1stop 12y ago
  > Putin and Xi both defining what is and isn't allowed to be shared/said/stored in machines on their soil. Add Obama to the list. Lest we forget what Amazon/Paypal/Visa/Mastercard did to Wikileaks on US government request.
fidotron 12y ago
There's a tiny bit of substance here, but what's amusing is how out of touch with reality they are on some comparisons. For example: “You’ve got people spending their time figuring out how to send a file instead of getting their work done.” This happens in every company with an internet connection. "That has led to the rise of a number of locally run application stores, which analysts say will sometimes market pirated copies of software or charge extra to promote a new application." So the piracy problem doesn't happen so much in the west, but the objection here is that simply advertising on Facebook or Google isn't going to get you a global audience because someone has split off part of the market. This is like saying how terribly inconvenient it is that not everyone in the world watches US based TV channels.
- oevi 12y ago
  I live in China (I'm from Europe) and the article is a really good representation of the daily work life here. Without a good VPN service the internet feels like half of the stuff is missing. Ironically the NY Times is also blocked in China. - "This happens in every company with an internet connection." Yes, that's right. Now multiply this by 100. As described in the article, the internet is not only censored but also unreliable. Some sites work only sometimes, others break silently. If you work for an international company, the websites and services your western colleagues use, will not work for you (dropbox, fb, google, xing, etc). - "This is like saying how terribly inconvenient it is that not everyone in the world watches US based TV channels" No, the whole point of the internet is to be accesible from everywhere. Advertisers on US based TV channels target an US audience. If I release an Android app on the Play Store, I expect it to be downloadable by everyone with internet access.
  - esturk 12y ago
    NY Times has been blocked in China ever since the former released information about the ex-premier Wen Jiabao's family fortune.
justicezyx 12y ago
That's be honest that this is inevitable after Snowden. The delay from the incident to this broad regulation pretty much show that Chinese Government as an omnipresent regulatory force can do a lot to enforce national-wide regulations. And with Alibaba and many other Chinese Internet companies' global presence, it would become inconsequential to block any foreign Internet companies... Oops, this part is probably scarier...
iliketosleep 12y ago
I've been living in China, and I can definitely feel a shift here. These days, as an English-speaker in China it's almost impossible to get anything done online without VPN. Google, for most practical purposes, is blocked. Using other search engines, a large percentage of sites won't load when you click on them. Considering the scale and importance of China's economy, the Chinese gov. is moving in an ominous direction.
- Kaihuang724 12y ago
  My family has done business in China pretty much my whole life, and my take on it is that the Chinese gov. is more or less a bloated system. As the economy grows, greater access is definitely needed and I think top gov. officials realize this, but really nothing can be done in a timely fashion there because of how their politics work.
  - iliketosleep 12y ago
    If they realize it, then why is access becoming MORE restricted than ever before? Ever since Chairman Xi came into power, all I can see is more restrictions and tightening of gov. policy.
    - trevelyan 12y ago
      Everyone in the government/military uses a VPN. Seriously. The controls aren't for the government.
    - est 12y ago
      > If they realize it, then why is access becoming MORE restricted than ever before? Believe it or not, network filtering is a huge business in China, especially selling products to gov.
    - Kaihuang724 12y ago
      As the comments before me mentioned, the sad reality is corruption is rampant right now. When everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie, it'll only stop once the pie runs out.
robomartin 12y ago
Human beings... We think we are so evolved culturally and intellectually. Just take a look at what's going on around the world. We are but a step away from cavemen. Sad.
pwarner 12y ago
How is this allowed from a free trade perspective? Not to diminish the human rights portion, but even from a purely financial standpoint how does China get away with this?
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  The same way the US flouts free trade agreements: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/17/263101422/why-u-s-taxpayers-started-and-stopped-paying-brazilian-cotton-farmers http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/17/263101422/why-u-s-... When you're big enough, the laws don't apply to you.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
westiseast 12y ago
More and more I feel like this is pure protectionism and not internal security or censorship. The Chinese government already has a vice-like grip on the internet and has no qualms about locking up dissidents. We know from the Harvard social network study that they really only care about activism and not criticism. Most of the population has been through the Chinese education system and they are generally speaking apathetic and passive when it comes to politics or the possibility of change. And, don't forget, just like most Western netizens, users are mostly interested in non-political aspects of the web - chatting to friends, getting work done, watching movies online.... The only sense for this blanket ban/slowdown/disruption of big foreign online services seems to be to shelter Chinese companies from foreign competition.
- k_sze 12y ago
  That does seem to be the case. This July I travelled to the Hubei and Jiangsu provinces. I couldn't get on Gmail or Dropbox without going through Tor. But I had no problem opening the zh.wikipedia.org (the Wikipedia in Chinese), which has content that the Party decidedly would not like to see, such as the account of the Tiananmen events. And I could do that with HTTP or HTTPS, without VPN or Tor. I'm guessing they don't block Wikipedia because nobody in the population really cares anymore, and Baidu is not making enough money out of Baidu Baike (Baidu's online encyclopedia) for it to matter.
  - 1stop 12y ago
    Or perhaps they just edit the chinese version of the wikipedia article to be more sympathetic. It's not like chinese don't know that tiananmen square happened. They just (generally) don't believe it was wrong. Also studying the event, it's pretty grey in general. The west's portrayal of it is not without bias.
    - k_sze 12y ago
      "They just (generally) don't believe it was wrong." That's not exactly true. The deeper issue is that the Party wants the people to forget the incidence or make it look trivial and insignificant, so that any discussion about right or wrong does not even surface. In fact, there isn't much that the Party needs to do about it nowadays. The population is literally drowned in entertainment, amusing themselves to death, which is part of the reason the government can start to repurpose the GFW towards protectionism.
bostan 12y ago
sites using google fonts are basically unable to load or takes too much time to load too.
be5invis 12y ago
The large-magnitude international relationship structure is changing. The new cold war is approaching. Therefore the internet -- built in 1990s -- will be splitted. Again.
illumen 12y ago
Spy on the Chinese and this is what you get.
iamleppert 12y ago
Probably because a lot of people use jquery and other frontend libraries hosted by google, and those (of course) have been blocked by some moron in China. And most sites don't properly handle cases when third party assets fail to load.
riverain 12y ago
I'm a Chinese software developer. In China, VPN or other proxy tools are essential for anyone who need look up serious technical materials online. We call it "翻墙"(Go Over the Wall), which is a basic skill. And about the reason why these sites are blocked: just BECAUSE THEY CAN! (They even blocked github for mysterious purpose once!) There is no public rule/law/principle to tell us why a foreign site is blocked. The just kill sites silently and pretend nobody cares. Fortunately enough, HackNews has not been blocked, yet. (Sorry for my bad English)
- possibilistic 12y ago
  Do you think this harms new engineering students in China when they don't have access to tools and knowledge that the rest of the world does? I can't imagine having Github blocked. Does there seem to be a pattern to the blocks? Or is it just completely random?
  - 2muchcoffeeman 12y ago
    Maybe it helps weed out the lesser engineers. Step one is trying to work out how to get the information you need.
    - patrickaljord 12y ago
      > Maybe it helps weed out the lesser engineers. Problem is VPNs require money, not just skills and tor can be dead slow.
ddxv 12y ago
VPNs are sometimes unreliable too, they seem to be getting blocked/shut down quite often, so lately I pay for two VPNs to try and get around these problems. >.<

63 points by digital55 12y ago

This isn't really news is it? Putin and Xi both defining what is and isn't allowed to be shared/said/stored in machines on their soil. The next step can start pretty much at any point, its going to look like the old ARPAnet, where a set of protocols, defined by group sharing a common interest in communication, creates a network that empowers new work and new industry. Back in the 70's the big issues were bandwidth and signalling technology, today the big issues are interference from the government. But from an engineering standpoint its just getting signal through the noise. As I mentioned earlier, UUCP through Tor has a lot of potential for creating a pretty decent source routed email network without central control. Add homomorphic encryption on routing/packet management and you have the basis for building the first network within the network.

chj 12y ago
Actually it is a universal problem. Anything that involves a central server or a legal representative will be under government control.
dengnan 12y ago
Tor does not work in China. Since their servers' addresses are publicly available, it is quite easy to block. To access real Internet inChina, it is not only about encryption, nor anonymity. you have to hide the fact that you are accessing a foreign server. GFW has this feature: if a node inside GFW access a foreign address too long/frequently, the foreign address will be temporary blocked. This is a very rude but powerful feature.
1stop 12y ago
> Putin and Xi both defining what is and isn't allowed to be shared/said/stored in machines on their soil. Add Obama to the list. Lest we forget what Amazon/Paypal/Visa/Mastercard did to Wikileaks on US government request.

fidotron 12y ago

There's a tiny bit of substance here, but what's amusing is how out of touch with reality they are on some comparisons. For example: “You’ve got people spending their time figuring out how to send a file instead of getting their work done.” This happens in every company with an internet connection. "That has led to the rise of a number of locally run application stores, which analysts say will sometimes market pirated copies of software or charge extra to promote a new application." So the piracy problem doesn't happen so much in the west, but the objection here is that simply advertising on Facebook or Google isn't going to get you a global audience because someone has split off part of the market. This is like saying how terribly inconvenient it is that not everyone in the world watches US based TV channels.

oevi 12y ago
I live in China (I'm from Europe) and the article is a really good representation of the daily work life here. Without a good VPN service the internet feels like half of the stuff is missing. Ironically the NY Times is also blocked in China. - "This happens in every company with an internet connection." Yes, that's right. Now multiply this by 100. As described in the article, the internet is not only censored but also unreliable. Some sites work only sometimes, others break silently. If you work for an international company, the websites and services your western colleagues use, will not work for you (dropbox, fb, google, xing, etc). - "This is like saying how terribly inconvenient it is that not everyone in the world watches US based TV channels" No, the whole point of the internet is to be accesible from everywhere. Advertisers on US based TV channels target an US audience. If I release an Android app on the Play Store, I expect it to be downloadable by everyone with internet access.
- esturk 12y ago
  NY Times has been blocked in China ever since the former released information about the ex-premier Wen Jiabao's family fortune.

justicezyx 12y ago

That's be honest that this is inevitable after Snowden. The delay from the incident to this broad regulation pretty much show that Chinese Government as an omnipresent regulatory force can do a lot to enforce national-wide regulations. And with Alibaba and many other Chinese Internet companies' global presence, it would become inconsequential to block any foreign Internet companies... Oops, this part is probably scarier...

iliketosleep 12y ago

I've been living in China, and I can definitely feel a shift here. These days, as an English-speaker in China it's almost impossible to get anything done online without VPN. Google, for most practical purposes, is blocked. Using other search engines, a large percentage of sites won't load when you click on them. Considering the scale and importance of China's economy, the Chinese gov. is moving in an ominous direction.

Kaihuang724 12y ago
My family has done business in China pretty much my whole life, and my take on it is that the Chinese gov. is more or less a bloated system. As the economy grows, greater access is definitely needed and I think top gov. officials realize this, but really nothing can be done in a timely fashion there because of how their politics work.
- iliketosleep 12y ago
  If they realize it, then why is access becoming MORE restricted than ever before? Ever since Chairman Xi came into power, all I can see is more restrictions and tightening of gov. policy.
  - trevelyan 12y ago
    Everyone in the government/military uses a VPN. Seriously. The controls aren't for the government.
  - est 12y ago
    > If they realize it, then why is access becoming MORE restricted than ever before? Believe it or not, network filtering is a huge business in China, especially selling products to gov.
  - Kaihuang724 12y ago
    As the comments before me mentioned, the sad reality is corruption is rampant right now. When everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie, it'll only stop once the pie runs out.

robomartin 12y ago

Human beings... We think we are so evolved culturally and intellectually. Just take a look at what's going on around the world. We are but a step away from cavemen. Sad.

pwarner 12y ago

How is this allowed from a free trade perspective? Not to diminish the human rights portion, but even from a purely financial standpoint how does China get away with this?

w1ntermute 12y ago
The same way the US flouts free trade agreements: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/17/263101422/why-u-s-taxpayers-started-and-stopped-paying-brazilian-cotton-farmers http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/17/263101422/why-u-s-... When you're big enough, the laws don't apply to you.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

westiseast 12y ago

More and more I feel like this is pure protectionism and not internal security or censorship. The Chinese government already has a vice-like grip on the internet and has no qualms about locking up dissidents. We know from the Harvard social network study that they really only care about activism and not criticism. Most of the population has been through the Chinese education system and they are generally speaking apathetic and passive when it comes to politics or the possibility of change. And, don't forget, just like most Western netizens, users are mostly interested in non-political aspects of the web - chatting to friends, getting work done, watching movies online.... The only sense for this blanket ban/slowdown/disruption of big foreign online services seems to be to shelter Chinese companies from foreign competition.

k_sze 12y ago
That does seem to be the case. This July I travelled to the Hubei and Jiangsu provinces. I couldn't get on Gmail or Dropbox without going through Tor. But I had no problem opening the zh.wikipedia.org (the Wikipedia in Chinese), which has content that the Party decidedly would not like to see, such as the account of the Tiananmen events. And I could do that with HTTP or HTTPS, without VPN or Tor. I'm guessing they don't block Wikipedia because nobody in the population really cares anymore, and Baidu is not making enough money out of Baidu Baike (Baidu's online encyclopedia) for it to matter.
- 1stop 12y ago
  Or perhaps they just edit the chinese version of the wikipedia article to be more sympathetic. It's not like chinese don't know that tiananmen square happened. They just (generally) don't believe it was wrong. Also studying the event, it's pretty grey in general. The west's portrayal of it is not without bias.
  - k_sze 12y ago
    "They just (generally) don't believe it was wrong." That's not exactly true. The deeper issue is that the Party wants the people to forget the incidence or make it look trivial and insignificant, so that any discussion about right or wrong does not even surface. In fact, there isn't much that the Party needs to do about it nowadays. The population is literally drowned in entertainment, amusing themselves to death, which is part of the reason the government can start to repurpose the GFW towards protectionism.

bostan 12y ago

sites using google fonts are basically unable to load or takes too much time to load too.

be5invis 12y ago

The large-magnitude international relationship structure is changing. The new cold war is approaching. Therefore the internet -- built in 1990s -- will be splitted. Again.

illumen 12y ago

Spy on the Chinese and this is what you get.

iamleppert 12y ago

Probably because a lot of people use jquery and other frontend libraries hosted by google, and those (of course) have been blocked by some moron in China. And most sites don't properly handle cases when third party assets fail to load.

riverain 12y ago

I'm a Chinese software developer. In China, VPN or other proxy tools are essential for anyone who need look up serious technical materials online. We call it "翻墙"(Go Over the Wall), which is a basic skill. And about the reason why these sites are blocked: just BECAUSE THEY CAN! (They even blocked github for mysterious purpose once!) There is no public rule/law/principle to tell us why a foreign site is blocked. The just kill sites silently and pretend nobody cares. Fortunately enough, HackNews has not been blocked, yet. (Sorry for my bad English)

possibilistic 12y ago
Do you think this harms new engineering students in China when they don't have access to tools and knowledge that the rest of the world does? I can't imagine having Github blocked. Does there seem to be a pattern to the blocks? Or is it just completely random?
- 2muchcoffeeman 12y ago
  Maybe it helps weed out the lesser engineers. Step one is trying to work out how to get the information you need.
  - patrickaljord 12y ago
    > Maybe it helps weed out the lesser engineers. Problem is VPNs require money, not just skills and tor can be dead slow.

ddxv 12y ago

VPNs are sometimes unreliable too, they seem to be getting blocked/shut down quite often, so lately I pay for two VPNs to try and get around these problems. >.<