China builds 'free trade data port' inclusive of submarine cable landing station

China has earmarked ¥31.8bn ($5bn) to build the first free trade data port in the nation as it tries to bolster and control information flowing across its borders, the country's state-sponsored media says. Known as the Nansha International Data Free Trade Port, the project basically involves plumbing in a series of undersea …

[ShadowSystems]

Not bloody likely...

They have a "Great Firewall" & aren't afraid to use it. There is no way they will allow an uncensored, unfiltered, free flow of information to cross their borders & thus be available to their citizens. The government & ruling elites would never withstand the cultural backlash from uncensored history becoming available to their citizens.

Tienamin(sp) Square, Winney the Pooh, boy bands, "culturally inappropriate" issues that the government absolutely does not want their citizens to know. How non-dictatorships function & allow their citizens to live, goods & services & information & opportunities that the "barbarians" get to enjoy but the "vaunted" Chinese citizens do not.

I know they won't let their citizens to leave the country, so the trickle of folks to the nearest foreign embassy might just turn into a flood of folks seeking political/religious asylum & a quick exit out under the cover of an international flight on some other country's private jet.

And you just know that any data sent over such Chinese government controlled cables will be copied to Chinese servers, data mined for every nugget of PayData they can glean, & that info used against those that provided it.

[Irony Deficient]

I know they won’t let their citizens to leave the country

According to NationMaster, in 2019, China had the greatest number of tourism international departures of any nation on Earth — 156,975,364 trips by Chinese citizens leaving China. (For comparison, Germany came in second that year, with 105,830,154 trips by German citizens leaving Germany.)

[jmch]

Re: I know they won’t let their citizens to leave the country

Germany's would work out at > 1 trip per person. China's at less than 10%. I have a sneaking suspicion that undesirables and 'troublemakers' can't get hold of a passport - this wouldn't affect the outward flow in any meaningful way

[Irony Deficient]

Germany’s would work out at > 1 trip per person. China’s at less than 10%.

According to this site, China’s population in 2019 was 1,433,783,691, which would put China at 10.948%. Among the reasons for the difference in tourist trips per capita per annum between Germany and China are:

• Germany has a much higher income per capita than China has, which makes international tourism more affordable for the average German than for the average Chinese person; and
• on average, much less travel distance is required for a German to cross a German border than for his Chinese counterpart to cross a Chinese border.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re:China’s income per capita

> income per capita

Just to put that in context: June 2020 China's Premier proudly announced that now only 40% of China's workers earn less than $4.65/day.

To put it another way: ~no Chinese person you meet outside China is "lower" than China's upper middle classes.

[Allan George Dyer]

What does that even mean?

"realizes the first cross-border operation in China"

It's (obviously) not the first international submarine cable entering China, what border is it crossing, and why is it different? Nansha is in the middle of the Pearl River delta, and from the link Hong Kong and Macao are involved. These big statements often leave me wondering, has something been lost in the translation, or is it purely PR hype?

Entirely unjustified speculation... does "cross-border" refer to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (crossing the internal border between the two systems in one country)? Perhaps this is the first international cable terminating at a shared data centre? So international traffic to Hong Kong and Macao can pass through the same data centre... and be subject to the same inspection as Mainland traffic. Is this the extension of the Great Firewall to protect Hong Kong and Macao too?

How convenient, to have a single point which all approved data can flow through.

[Richard Crossley]

Re: What does that even mean?

Even more convenient if they turn everything else off especially as they're slowly turning Hong Kong into a Mainland territory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What does that even mean?

Slowly?

[Adelio]

Re: What does that even mean?

Satellite data will always be a problem for repressive regimes

[jmch]

Free Trade Port?

Interesting naming convention there!

In real life a 'Free Port' is considered to be outside the borders of the hosting country for tax and import/export purposes, allowing goods in transit to flow freely (the 'free' part in Free Trade) without added beareaucracy.

I'm not sure that what China has in mind is a data hub that is outside the reach of it's tentacles - rather the opposite. To me it sounds more like an 'all your data belong to us' Port

[elsergiovolador]

Opposite

Communists often means something completely opposite when naming things.

[julian.smith]

Re: Opposite

Have you heard of the PATRIOT Act?

The (barely) United States of America specialises in misleading names for legislation