Brutal web vice of the People's Republic crushes innovation, growth Recent high profile scandals in China, the fall of Poliburo member Bo Xilai and the US Embassy dash of human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, have highlighted the limits and the grim extent of country’s world-leading online censorship regime. However, web firms within the People’s Republic and online businesses looking to …
> The government maintains it is there to help prevent social disorder, fraud and the spread of
> pornography, but it would seem to any outsider that its key aim is to quell any political dissent and
> keep the party in power.
I'm sure the Government would say that the best way of preventing Social disorder *is* to quell political dissent and keep the party in power.
It all depends on your viewpoint...
Quite right, and from the Chinese Government's point of view, keeping China politically whole is the only goal. China has a long and turbulent history, and during the frequent periods of unrest and weak central control it has tended to break up into warring states run by warlords. The death tolls have been awful at times. Just look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion#Death_toll
This one is bit more recent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#Death_toll
I think the Chinese have long memories, and don't want to go back to that.
Just saying.
“The last thing the internet community wants to see is China breaking away, so it has a lot of leverage,” he said.
Really? There would be hell of a lot of people in internet security who would be happier if the great firewall stopped state sponsored traffic getting out, rather than user content getting in.
... the internet has always been a cooperative, and if you're trying to lay down the law you're not cooperating. Go there and I'm happier to see you seccede.
The internet community by and large likes being connected better than not being connected, but the leverage the Chinese government has to the outside is mostly economic. It's our growth fueled companies drooling over wet dreams about the sheer numbers, about all those people inside that great walled garden. Even if that's internet companies, that's not quite "the internet community".
The only reason the Western press publishes articles like this is because they want a piece of the investment/revenue pie in China. Internet management is common from West Orient all the way to Korea but you rarely see articles about how much more tightly those countries are controlled. Everyone likes to pick on China because they see an opportunity to exploit the populace there but it is "too hard" to do business there.
I work for a U.S. based company with a field office in Sandouping and the situation isn't nearly as bad as articles like this make it out to be. Many are happy about the trend towards industry self-regulation which shouldn't sound odd to anyone on the American side of the pond. That's all we want. We've proven it doesn't work too well and self regulating industry will screw the public, but IS a lot more open and unhappy voices do get out more now: Just slip through the cracks.
The Western world wants to say "global markets" but China isn't really playing that game. They ARE big enough to the point the rest of the world doesn't matter; they can do as they wish. There's a lot of money to be made in China, we did nearly $1.65B there in 2011. You have to pay to play, sure, but it's no different than paying to play in the States or Europe.
i think u r the only one who probably got it right of all the people reading or writing this article .. the Western media and companies just groan and moan ,.. but the fact is China is too big .. they dont care .. to keep their country intact and retain their political power, control and peace is their main aim .. companies who know how to play it right ... get it right in China .. in spite of all the things these articles say .. people are still investing and expanding in China ..
“The effect, cynically, is that if I want to catch you, I will be able to find a law somewhere that I can do it with.”
And how does this differ from anything that is going on in so called "free countries"?
From my point of view, China is at least 40 years behind in this kind of legislative dictatorship and in EU/US everyone already is a criminal, you just need to find a correct law. EU alone introduces 10 000 new laws _every year_.
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