China blocks all Google services as new leader anointed

The Great Firewall of China swung shut on Google this Friday as the Communist Party prepares to anoint its new leader, with search, Gmail, and other subdomains run by Google completely dead. The move comes as the ruling elite in China are gathered at the 18th National Congress in Beijing to anoint elect the new glorious leader …

[Anonymous Coward]

so?

Did anyone contact a user inside China to find out if they did the same thing to Sina Weibo? Or Twitter, Facebook, or Bing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: so?

Of course not. That would spoil the headline.

[JaitcH]

And does the US impose sanctions?

This simply highlights how stupid and short-sighted US policies are when it sanctions Iran.

No travel or monetary sanctions for China.

AND they have the NUCLEAR BOMB!

[Kevin 6]

Re: And does the US impose sanctions?

problem is if they sanction china wallmart will go out of business, and american unemployment will hit 75% overnight seeing those are mostly the only jobs made under the obama campaign

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Re: And does the US impose sanctions?

AND they have the NUCLEAR BOMB!

Hmmm... by that logic, they should sanction Israel.

[Ole Juul]

Re: And does the US impose sanctions?

You're right, it doesn't make sense. Now balloons, that's another story . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And does the US impose sanctions?

>No travel or monetary sanctions for China.

The official US Treasury figures for June showed $1.1 Trillion of USA's public debt is owed to China...private sector ownership and debt is anyone's guess, but they certainly own more of the USA than say, Warren Buffett.

>AND they have the NUCLEAR BOMB!

Yeah, but they don't need it - if China turns off the money, New Yorkers will be eating each other inside a month.

>This simply highlights how stupid and short-sighted US policies are when it sanctions Iran.

Iran has very little USA wants, except oil of course - but China, India & Taiwan buy most of that and always will regardless of EU/US sanctions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And does the US impose sanctions?

"Yeah, but they don't need it - if China turns off the money, New Yorkers will be eating each other inside a month."

...and the Chinese will be eating each other inside two months. Broadly, they only have a ton of money because we buy a ton of the stuff they make at the behest of our companies. When it comes down to it, China skims a percentage off the internal business of the US (obviously there are others, but for the sake of simplification...).

In other words, neither of us can cut off the other without suffering catastrophic consequences. China hasn't got the engineering or corporate infrastructure to design and sell things entirely on its own, and the US hasn't got the manufacturing (or at least, hasn't got it inexpensively) to produce them entirely on its own.

All things being equal, if there was a sudden cutoff between China and the US, I'd rather be in the US; we could - at great expense, but we could - manufacture things here. It wouldn't be pretty for quite a while, but it would happen.

China, on the other hand, would be in a much worse situation - they have neither the large middle class to buy things, nor the ability to make things to buy on its own. Without the massive cash inflow from the US, the whole system would collapse like an Angry Birds level. Their economy - marketing, manufacturing plants, transport, infrastructure, shipping, everything - is built around producing widgets from external designs as cheaply as possible, and getting them the hell out of the country as rapidly as possible. I doubt that would translate well - if at all - into a closed economy. They're all biceps and no heart; the US can survive as an amputee, but I don't think China can survive without any blood pumping through it.

[dssf]

Is China really a Tier 1 Nation?

If so, the membership requirement should be revisited...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is China really a Tier 1 Nation?

It is. It's time to revisit our prejudices - as I was forced to do with mine on a recent visit to China. China chooses to run its business by exerting a greater measure of control over its citizens than we in the West are comfortable with - but everyone I talked to said how much better it is now than in the Cultural Revolution times. Who was it that supported our western currencies in the big crash caused by our own greedy capitalist banks? The China of 30 years ago wouldn't have done that - they would have dumped us and we would have crashed and burned. China's economy is linked with all of ours - we all stay afloat together.

Today's China has shown that it really does play well with the other children unlike some. Let's all play nicely, now.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Is China really a Tier 1 Nation?

"everyone I talked to said how much better it is now than in the Cultural Revolution times"

That's what we call "damning with faint praise".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is China really a Tier 1 Nation?

> Who was it that supported our western currencies in the big crash caused by our own greedy capitalist banks?

I rather think they had no choice, having used most of their profit of the last ten years to buy US Government debt. The US and Chinese economies are massively intertwined - google "Chimerica" for example.

[Unicornpiss]

This is what will save the rest of the world

...from Chinese supremacy in industry. They are stifling themselves and holding themselves back. We should all be glad, except for the poor souls living in China that must suffer it.

[Anonymous Coward]

legitimate?

And yet some people would have us think that this style of government could be considered more legitimate than a western democracy

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20178655

'civilisation' indeed!?

See also

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20273007

[Ken Hagan]

Re: legitimate?

In fairness, the author of that article is quite obviously oblivious to the meaning of the words "legitimate" and "democracy".

[Graham Marsden]

Re: legitimate?

To quote from one of those articles: "[The Chinese Government] see the state as the embodiment and guardian of Chinese civilisation. Its most important responsibility - bar none - is maintaining the unity of the country."

No, what they see is that their power and authority (and no doubt lots of very nice perks) come from keeping the lid on anything that might undermine their power, because they've got a really cushy number and don't want to lose it which is what will happen when their general populace realise exactly how corrupt their entire system is.

They may throw the occasional sacrificial lamb out when someone does something so egregiously wrong that they can't simply cover it up, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[Long Fei]

Blocked

I can't say I noticed any difference yesterday, though Google search was unresponsive that's a fairly regular thing here, I've stared using Bing to search recently on non VPN'd machines.

Gmail is fine at the moment. (Sat afternoon).

...from Beijing.

[HarryDevlin]

I was very popular when I was in China once other people in the guest house saw me on Facebook, thanks to my VPN service. VPN is a must when visiting the middle kingdom.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine...

Quite a lot of Chinese businesses run on Google. They've gone and shot themselves in the foot.

[ChrisInAStrangeLand]

Re: Fine...

The businesses will now know better to not rely on those evil western devils email services.

[DJGM]

Communists are all idiots of the worst kind!

I feel sorry for the people of China, being run by evil communist dictators barely any better than that tubby muppet who's now in charge of North Korea. Communism really needs to be stamped out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Communists are all idiots of the worst kind!

Why on earth would you think that China is a communist nation? :P

Seriously - no national health care plan, few regulations in the workplace, extreme disparity between the vast poor and the few obscenely wealthy, and the government props up huge corporations to ensure their success. That's not communism - it's Tea Party laissez faire!

[Grave]

Re: Communists are all idiots of the worst kind!

its plutarchic capitalism (like usa)

any form of capitalism inevitably leads to plutarchy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tea Party laissez faire?

You forgot to add corruption.

[DrewG]

Re: Communists are all idiots of the worst kind!

True communism is a wonderful fallacy, unfortunately it can never truly exist.

China is FAR from truly communist.

[Psyx]

Re: Communists are all idiots of the worst kind!

"I feel sorry for the people of China, being run by evil communist dictators barely any better than that tubby muppet who's now in charge of North Korea. Communism really needs to be stamped out."

As opposed to lovely America where your vote REALLY lets you put the person that you want in charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

TV too

Any mention of high-up Party members on CNN gets the blank-screen treatment on cable TV here in China. It goes blank and silent just long enough to cover the length of any potentially-disruptive broadcasts.

/anon for obvious reasons

[crayon]

Be thankful

that they're not forcing the rest of the world to block google. Unlike when the US doesn't like something (eg Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program) it tries to force the rest of the world to follow US policy.

[Anonymous Coward]

This illustrates that China doesn't play be the same rules

and yet our stupid prime minister, stephen harper (Canada), has negotiated a Canada-China FIPA, worse deal ever. India ran away from a similar deal China wanted with them. The Canadian prime minister has got to be getting paid a bundle by someone to try and sell this FIPA. I don't like to think that but he's an economist and every other expert I've read has torn this treaty apart.

[BelieveItOrNot]

seems it was only temporary

https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/nov/google-unblocked-again-was-it-mistake-or-test

[Anonymous Coward]

May I be the first to say to the new Chinese Overlord:

ying tong iddle i po!

[Anonymous Coward]

As much I hate China's stance on human rights, they do, after all, have the right to conduct themselves in a manner they see fit in their own country.

We might not like it, I don't, but it wrong of "us" to try to make changes. Its a matter for the chinese to resolve.