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Comment by AznHisoka | Hacker News Reader

Newbie question but what is China's rationale for their internet censorship and firewall? What are they afraid of?

The concept they use is “social harmony.”

This is a sort of shorthand for discouraging people from developing strong, dissident, aberrant or divisive political positions. Discouraging people from taking on political identities in general, other than a unified chinese identity. Discouraging people from disparaging and/or distrusting the government. Keeping fringey social trends out of the mainstream.

If you think of how strong political identities are currently in the US, this is exactly what they are trying to prevent. They want to keep everyone on the same page in terms of political and social norms.

The skeptical take is that the CCP is protecting itself from popular and democratic revolutionary movements.

China will consider democracy only when the credit bubble pops which will delegitimize the Communist party. Tianamen square was at the inflection point when Investment flooded into corrupt post maoist china, democratic movement was everywhere but was quashed by increasingly belligerent communists apparatchiks.

The CCP has only been able to eliminate dissent by eliminating moral hazard. They promised that the bubbles won't pop, so when they do, it isn't going to be pretty at all.

Hasn't happened in India, yet.

>The skeptical take is that the CCP is protecting itself from popular and democratic revolutionary movements.

On the other hand, a country with 1.x billion people and several languages/ethnicities can become a huge hell-hole without social harmony.

This "revolution" thing didn't end that well in Libya, even if they managed to get rid of the old leader. Same with the "democracy" that was re-installed in Iraq and elsewhere.

So, one has to be careful what they wish for.

I want to add that historically Chinese people (not the modern sense of china) went through brutal revolutions either started by powerful individuals or as grass root riots against the central dynasty. The lesson learned is clear, the people are suffering no matter what. So there is a strong sense to be stable for the people, even it means tolerates a less than perfect government.

It doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me at all. Nationalism and solidarity among citizens has always been a great source of unity in countries, but in the last decade or so it seems to become interpreted as a cardinal sin, and has has split several countries down the middle.

If I was leading China I'd most definitely want to keep this sort of bizarre thinking out of my country.

I didn’t mean that literally. The biggest idea that the CCP specifically wants kept out of China is open elections. Anti-nationalism is not really on the radar, and the CCP itself has some anti-nationalist roots from its Marxist heritage.

Anti-nationalism is synonymous with Nazism with many people in the west, and the west sets many cultural trends, I think it is perfectly reasonable for Chinese leadership to be cautious.

? How is anti-nationalism synonymous with Nazism? The Nazis were the exact opposite. They were ultra-nationalists.

>Newbie question but what is China's rationale for their internet censorship and firewall? What are they afraid of?

Aside from the CCP wanting to maintain its control in-land, there's this little real issue, that 80% the internet is mostly controlled from a handful of companies, all in the hands of foreign nationals (who are all "patriotic" and all reside in countries other than China).

That is, things like search, social media, etc services are not a neutral international ground, but mostly dominated by a single country's companies. Those foreign countries get to siphon the data, dictate what's acceptable, promote their culture, viewpoints and national interests 24/7, censor or bury what they don't like, etc.

So, while lesser countries might bend over and take it, it makes sense for a country that is a superpower in itself, and has billions of people, to take control of its own web and have its own search, social media, etc -- orthogonally to if they censor them or not.

Ask yourselves: if Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft where e.g. Russian or Chinese, would the US (as a state and as citizens) be using them them all the same?

I think the Answer is yes.

We had no issue with Nokia or Toyota. We consume Anime. Lots of companies use Kaspersky despite apparent ties to RU intelligence services. There is some talk of the DoD pulling out from a contract --but that's DoD and I imagine Chinese version of DoD would do something similar.

>We had no issue with Nokia or Toyota.

Neither Nokia not Toyota were relevant on the pipes and on the culture/interest/spying/etc level. It was just buying foreign consumer products. (And neither is Anime an example of that).

None of those things are like using a foreign Google, Facebook, etc.

And even for those (which are entirely time), there were huge worries about the Japanese "buying everything" (in the 80s), and people saying people should "buy American" etc.

People were rightfully concerned about the lack of reciprocal trade. While true American cars would not attract much of a market in Japan (due to a few issues like gas consumption, size, etc.) the market was not as open to US products as the US market was open to Japanese products, despite the inherent handicap.

But you do have a problem with Huawei.

Do you mean people buying phones, or do you mean some enterprises (and govt's like India) weary of their Firmware backdoors?

I mean governments like the US government.

It is not just the foreign aspect. China government will shut down private Chinese actors who voice opinions or provide an independent platform which goes against the party line.

Sure, but my point was more about why any, even a totally democratic national government, might want to control those things, not just China.

The CCP is the only political party in China and is willing to do whatever it takes to keep it that way. The CCP is also known for abducting journalists for reporting on "rumors" (i.e. reporting on stuff the CCP doesn't like), the Tiananmen Square massacre, hiring an army of paid internet trolls to advance the party line on domestic and foreign websites, and trying to set up an Orwellian "social credit" system where things like support for the party line affect whether you can take out a loan from the bank or use the public transit system. I could go on but I think you get the point.

EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, everything I mentioned has been widely reported on and can be confirmed in ten seconds with a Google search.

They care about social harmony. Don't want to make people upset.

That's the official version.

It's most probably about rejecting the influences from the West, preservation of Chinese culture. Recently there's also quite a huge war on influence of Korean culture.

Just as Fox News won't tell the truth, and hold on to their line even in the face of evidence, so do the Chinese. Most of us are guilty of not trying to be inclusive enough with other people and prefer to live in our little bubble. There is always a cost for that - just look at what happened in 2016-17.

Don't make it unnecessarily partisan.

I have no beef in this fight, not being an American, but I see the same behaviour from Fox, CNN (probably the biggest offender), MSNBC, Breitbart and sometimes even BBC.

I don't know, I think it might be more beneficial for those who can accurately observe the political cirque de jour in whatever locale (opposed to being caught up in it) to engage amongst themselves, than trying engage with those who belief systems are dominated by a particular local/flavor (unless such engagement is exploiting another particulars beliefs against another for some gain).

Said another way a bit more reductionist, it seems that any engagement between CNN vs Fox types is rather marginal (for expected outcomes), vs playing both sides and exploiting the cognitive dissonance/norms differential between the two.

I think this chapter in human nature could be described as a conundrum that arises from the allegory of the cave.

They've known for ages that the biggest threat to China is not some foreign enemy but China itself. This also applies to the US btw, we just haven't fully realized it yet.

>What are they afraid of?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

You can't make socialism with too much freedom. People would look at homosexual stuff and wouldn't go to party meetings.

Eh? Don't think socialism is to blame here. Sweden, as an example, is a very socialist country and also with a high degree of freedom to look at whatever you want (almost).

Sweden isn't socialist at all, it's a social democracy. Social democracies do not aim at making means of production a common good.

By that token, china isn't socialist at all. It is an autocratic corporatist state that relies heavily on capitalism.

I think the confusion is that socialism is used to refer both the economic policies as well as political policies, which are actually orthogonal to each other..

In the case of China it is socialism in political policies but very capitalist in economic policies.

Sweden is socialism in the economic sense but politically it values freedom much more than China , you will see this if you notice the differences in tax rates in Sweden vs China.

Socialism is about collective ownership of industry. It has nothing to do with tax rates. The source of this misconception is likely decades of misinformation spouted by ahem certain American political groups that wanted to keep taxes low.

I always thought that was communism.

Communism can be considered a form of socialism. It's like socialism but with additional requirements. There are different interpretations of it (Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc.). What I would consider a "pure" definition of it would be socialism without the presence social classes, money, or the state (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism). This is necessarily much different from just socialism by itself.

My understanding is that although Sweden may have high tax rates, it on the other hand has a more-free market than the US. Hard to place Sweden on either side of the Capitalist/Socialist spectrum.

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