China Blocks WhatsApp
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The end result is that China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert
The people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. This is already true, but its importance will grow as China's censorship grows.
The more China closes up, the less Western companies have to fear about future tech dominance or crazy innovation from China in the long run
To be fair, things may even out since Western governments seem to be doing all they can to copy China's censorship and gov control. SOPA, PIPA, SESTA, and the Digital Economy Bill come to mind. I'm sure others can add more to the list.
Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster.
Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but stays integrated in the markets, as well as the academic exchanges.
The Chinese government doesn't stop high tech investment, but only blocks a few select companies that have products that are, at their core, easy to replicate (WhatsApp, Facebook, to a lesser degree Google) at a sufficient level of quality.
Rather than free markets pushing towards a more liberal politics, the Chinese government develops means to make the market optimize for political obedience [1].
Most people individually will consider themselves "free enough", and not care about politics as long as the country is well managed. Nothing stops you from starting to research or trying to build self-driving cars in China [2]. China will continue to manage to hire western talent for its firms [3] until whatever skill gap still exists is filled.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/goldman-says-china-has-talen...
[3] https://qz.com/1062035/half-of-the-top-10-employers-of-ai-ta...
I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of foreign apps to Chinese consumers and to underestimate the Chinese market. It's almost laughable that people think blocking WhatsApp will make any difference to Chinese people.
eg., the Chinese tech/online market is so huge it can sustain multiple competitors of its own in each sector - ride-hailing, search, shopping, food delivery, maps, chat, mobile payments all have massive players providing their own competition and innovation.
Genuine ground-breaking technological innovation is rare. When it happens, it's not like China won't get it (eg. touchscreens) because it blocked Google. In a lot of ways, because Chinese consumers are so quick to adopt new technology, there's sometimes more low-level innovation/adaptation because companies can rely on new apps/tools getting traction quickly.
So if the strategy is have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too why does the rest of the world play along? Corporate greed outside the control of governmental entities?
Like the parent and unlike the grandparent, I'm not convinced "openness" of the sort that fosters innovation requires liberal societal values. Openness in terms of not being legally restricted from copying and improving on existing products is the bigger one there, and China has this in spades. It's similar to the industrializing United States in the 19th century, which went from copying industrialized England to surpassing it - would less free political speech have stopped that?
China two years ago or maybe China might permit enough market choice to allow basic innovation. But appetite of the repressive apparatus is not going to be sated and virtually all choices may wind-up being politicized. What happens when a well-connected individual asks you to invest-in/consult-for/etc their enterprise? What impact on your social credit might it have if you refuse?
It is fairly well established that secrecy and repression tends to breed corruption - when individuals have untouchable power, of course they'll want to leverage that for gain.
There have been just rulers for a while, but the risk of regression to the mean is ever present. We'll see how things go.
Conceptualization is not making something actually happen, unlike what the patent-trolls want us to believe. IoT was first proposed in the 90s, but did it gain any traction before cheap Chinese prototyping components? This bares the question, is it the West that has made IoT or the East?
It’s of course not nice to read such things, but who cares in the end. If you go to China, you’ll use Something else.
If China banned coca-cola and bragged about its burgeoning soft-drink industry we'd all be laughing at it.
I agree however that China can take a light enough approch and that's why I continue to think China growth will go on.
The possibility that eventually Chinese internet products could by their own merit compete in the global market, outcompeting western alternatives in some cases, is the even more terrifying aspect to me, however. I wrote a lengthy post about it not too long ago, and don't have anything useful to add to it yet, so please excuse the copy-paste:
To authoritarian governments all over the world, the censorship and surveillance frameworks built into many Chinese internet services like WeChat are actually extremely valuable features, rather than something they'd want to opt out of.
These features have been battle-tested in the largest and most ruthlessly robust surveillance state the world has ever seen, and have time and again proven their effectiveness in influencing public opinion and quelling dissent.
If an app like WeChat were to ever gain foothold in a nation with an authoritarian government, all they'd have to do is strike a deal with TenCent, and with the flip of a switch, that government can then enjoy unprecedented control and visibility into the "private" communications of its populace. All the friction involved in the decidedly difficult and costly exercise of building your own large-scale surveillance/censorship infrastructure will suddenly have been removed. The one thing Chinese internet services can offer that no western counterpart can reasonably compete with also makes them by far China's most dangerous export: authoritarianism as a service.
To those of us in democratic nations, we must also remember that authoritarianism usually doesn't manifest itself as a cliff, but rather as a gradual, slippery downward slope. Every government in the past has displayed authoritarian tendencies in their history, to varying degrees, and governments in the future will inevitably continue to do so. The natural tendency of government is to slide down the slope of authoritarianism, because government is power, and power corrupts. It takes diligence and continued effort on the part of the governing body and its citizenship to counteract this natural descent.
All it would take is another 911 type terrorist attack to sway public opinion enough to the point where enacting some kind of dragnet surveillance system in the name of national security would become politically feasible, in any democratic nation in the world. At that point, the horrible user experience and PR nightmare in having to rebalance the national budget or raise taxes to make room for improving your domestic spying infrastructure could be the only thing standing between us and an irreversible descent into authoritarianism. And if a significant portion of a democratic populace happens to be using WeChat at that point, well, let's just say I don't have a lot of faith that my own government could resist the temptation and take a principled stand against such a frictionless way to expand its own powers.
As Chinese offerings mature and become polished and innovative enough to compete with western counterparts in markets outside of China, we could easily start to see users around the world voluntarily start switching to them. That could very well mark the beginning of the end of this golden age of democracy as we know it.
I highly recommend taking a look at Nathan Freitas's excellent talk "The Great Firewall Inverts": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEJGqNf2rgk. In it, he explores how China's so-called Great Firewall is actually a bit of a misnomer because it's most crucial functionality is its ability to control the flow of information inside its own borders as opposed of keeping information out, how this ability is readily available to be exported to countries around the world in the form of internet services like WeChat, and what we can do about it (which is unfortunately, not a lot, other than to educate others on the very non-obvious non-immediate consequences of using these services, and to be vigilant about the spread of authoritarianism in our own governments).
with low value for the Chinese economy.
> optimize for political obedience
And put innovation in a grave. Without a gravestone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland...
Google, facebook, instagram, twitter etc. Those are one-way streets that provide next to no jobs, little tech transfer and no tax revenue to the countries they do business in, but tend to outcompete the local rivals if left to it, and are proven to provide a convenient surveillance platform for American intelligence.
It's surprising that any country would allow that to continue unchecked. The Chinese solution is certainly not great but I doubt the US would allow Chinese companies to keep a daily log on the activities of most US citizens and businesses. Or to replace entire industries like advertising without providing jobs or taxes in return.
Hold on now - Google still provides immense value.
And what does it cost?
Nothing.
The 'consumer surplus' value of G and FB are quite immense.
Google captures a tiny fraction of the value they create via ads.
What would Canada do without Google?
There is no Google here.
If we started with with 'government backing' it would be a s-show.
I understand about the issue from taxation perspective etc. - but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Google has a high degree of utility and FB does as well for many individuals.
Some jiggering with tax and investment laws might help, but on the whole, this is a 'good thing'.
Twitter. Well ... America can keep that :):):)
Absolutely. But so does Baidu. And while doing so, Baidu provides jobs and tax revenue in China with little national security risk for China. And at the same time Baidu creates thousands of extremely skilled Chinese software engineers.
For instance, you can invent a new category in order to avoid detaining people like criminals or war enemies if none of the laws applying to those are convenient.
So in other words, the ruling class continues to rule, as they will be the only ones with the sanctioned political freedoms to study abroad, etc.
> China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert
China being the world's giant copy machine has worked very well for those in power in China. Why not sustain that as long as possible? What other country has the stability and resources to replicate that? Most countries with extremely cheap labor don't have the supply chain.
This means that the Chinese are living in a bubble. This isn't news of course.
But the other issue is that they can't attract much foreign talent to relocate there, like Europe and the U.S. have historically done. Because they don't have a culture friendly to immigrants, but also because their environment is toxic for those of us that are accustomed to liberal democracies.
And their "copy machines" are actually racing against the clock, as more and more factories get fully automated and thus relocated home, not to mention their rising middle class, thus their cheap labor advantage will eventually go away. So when multinational companies will no longer assemble their products in China, what will they copy?
Of course, their middle class are now sending their children to western schools and many of them will probably go back to China, but on the other hand the best and brightest end up having the choice to stay in the west and many of them will.
Chinese urban households have only a per capita income of 29,831 yuan – an abysmal $4,500 a year.
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/china-is-still-really-poor/
And we see the effects of poverty on education: "Surveys by Rozelle's team have found that more than half of eighth graders in poor rural areas in China have IQs below 90, leaving them struggling to keep up with the fast-paced official curriculum"
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/one-three-chinese-chi...
Yes, but that's not OPs point, I think. What I think OP means is that the west doesn't have to worry (much) about China becoming the world's main innovation spot, because with censorship, the best they can do is copy. In a weird way, this is good for the western world.
Someone may correct me...
1. having a more open society results in more innovation, which results in more economic development which allows the ruling class to become even wealthier and more powerful globally
2. currently, only 18-20% of China is middle class. About 78% of China is still poor. If things slow down due to a lack of innovation, historically things get ugly.
You can just look at Europe.
I'm not advocating any policies or supporting anyone. I am just disputing the claim that free markets maximise innovation in this particular instance.
1. Competition breeds innovation. Monopolies and the like encourage stagnation.
2. How do you know Google would win in China if China didn't block them? Unlike Europe, China is extremely nationalistic. Even if the home brand was slightly worse, it would still probably win the majority of the market. Of course, the only thing stronger than Chinese nationalism is Chinese pessimism so we'll never know.
I think that's the kind of thing that the parent poster meant with this phrase:
> The end result is that China's fate as being > relegated to being the world's giant copy machine
The censorship of social media is mainly to prevent collective action:
"The study showed that, contrary to western conventional wisdom, Chinese social media is as raucous and chaotic as it is everywhere else, so the Daily Mail’s idea of a country full of timid, faceless people with only banal opinions is baloney.
The study also revealed, though, that these outlets are ruthlessly but astutely censored: what gets taken down, apart from the usual suspects such as Falun Gong, pornography, democracy etc, are any posts that could conceivably stimulate collective action, even when the posts are favourable towards the government. You can say more or less what you like in China, in other words, as long as nothing you say might have the effect of getting people out on to the streets."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/22/chines...
China doesn’t need western internet companies, they have a quarter of the world’s population. Can you blame them for wanting to promote home grown apps to build wealth within their country? Also, they like control, why would you let an foreigner end to end encryption app into your country? I don’t agree with their control but it’s not my country.
I’m surprised iMessage worked for me while I was there. I wonder what consessions Apple had to give for that?
From the article:
'Other services provided by American technology companies are available in mainland China. The country tolerates Microsoft’s Skype service for phone calls, which does not provide end-to-end encryption and as a result is easier for governments to monitor. Beijing also allows Apple’s FaceTime service, which has end-to-end encryption but does not have a WhatsApp-like feature allowing users to exchange secret codes — letting WhatsApp users combat what are known as “man in the middle” attacks.'
(I wonder whether it's tolerated because of Apple's small market share...)
Maybe the fact that iPhones are all made in china allow them, for the time being.
Their 5-years plan for 2016-2020 is about transitioning from the basic industry to more advanced industry and services. They want more research, they want more IT. Chinese IT workers are very critical of the Great Firewall and depend on VPNs to do a lot of things.
I think many are realizing that the Firewall is a handicap, but it is also undeniable that it is a very useful political tool. They will have to put that into the balance in front of their will to innovate.
They are also moving toward global leadership. In ecology, in foreign relations, they are willing to take the leadership that US is leaving. After being largely dismissive of it, if enough international pressure builds up, they may realize that opening up will help them reach these goals.
Sadly, thanks in no small part to Trump, they are probably realizing how dangerous it is to let people vote in a place where medias are not controlled, so my bet is that we will see either some more voting or some more openness in information exchange, but not both.
> To be fair, things may even out since Western governments seem to be doing all they can to copy China's censorship and gov control.
USA is jailing more of its citizens than China. Even in absolute numbers. USA kills more non-citizens abroad than China. In EU we tend to side with USA anyway because it is a democracy but the last president had less votes than his opponent and is a white supremacist.
Understand that for most of the world, accepting USA as a good guy is already a hell of a compromise. Seeing China as acceptable is not more far-fetched.
But it takes some major cynicism to actually consider the moral impact of USA vs China on a global stage comparable. They are much quieter about their international adventurism, but they have a decades long history of protecting and supporting bad actors. Whatever the failure of the USA, North Korea would not be a new breakout nuclear power threatening to become the most likely scenario for nuclear war without major backing and even encouragement from China. China also has multiple ongoing, top-down, programmed genocides happening in several territories, including cultural and institutional colonization of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
And that's not even raising the question of who's political values are better, both morally and strategically, for the human race.
I understand why cynicism with the US (and the whole West in general) is high... but let's keep things in perspective here.
Then Europeans are just as native as their reputation. Every country acts in their own self interest. For some, democracy and free markets are in their interest. For some, no.
Global leadership would be all but mirage if the reign were shattered. The ruling party knew this well.
On a separate note, Whatsapp has been copying WeChat's features rather than the other way around for years. So perhaps China thinks they can innovate enough on their own to match or outpace the outside world. While I don't think that's impossible, I don't think they've taken into account how much the cultural revolution wiped out a lot of culture and collective wisdom built up over the centuries, and that will put them at much more of a disadvantage than they realize.
I use both WeChat and WhatsApp extensively
China's access to leading technologies and technologists is absolutely unparalleled. The amount of Chinese students that are publishing some of the leading CS and ML research from the best universities and corporations worldwide is staggering when compared to all other nations.
China isn't 'Closing up' they are pushing people to use the services that they control and have insight into. Consider that Tencent, Baidu etc... all have major offices in SV, Seattle, LA etc. Remember the story from yesterday about the Chinese ADTech company giving $3M salaries? That's just growing.
Unless the US, Canada, France, Israel etc... closes the visa program for Chinese workers Chinese companies will continue to be relevant and innovative - and they will likely grow faster with more tailored services because, China has the biggest capabilities to mine user data - more than any other nation by far.
That's the thing. These are mostly overseas Chinese working for US/European companies who have no desire to return to China. Talk to any of them, and they're always concerned about the status of their visa and are ecstatic when they become a citizen of a democracy.
> China isn't 'Closing up' they are pushing people to use the services
Tencent and Baidu are used by tiny tiny tiny portions of westerners
> Unless the US, Canada, France, Israel etc... closes the visa program
There's no need, these Chinese students are staying and not returning to China.
By the way, since you think China is doing such a good job of education: remember that Rural households have a per capita income of only 9,892 yuan – about $4 dollars a day. and there's 680 million of these rural households still.
"Surveys by Rozelle's team have found that more than half of eighth graders in poor rural areas in China have IQs below 90, leaving them struggling to keep up with the fast-paced official curriculum"
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/one-three-chinese-chi...
That doesn't matter - they are focused on China and Asia. To think that they can't innovate inside the borders and with a significant number of people inside other companies and abroad is just putting blinders on.
since you think China is doing such a good job of education
Whoa, never said that. Mainland domestic policies for 1.7B (non official number) people are mediocre at best.
Yes most of them are in the West. Most of them also end up staying in the West too.
> Unless the US, Canada, France, Israel etc... closes the visa program for Chinese workers Chinese companies... Consider that Tencent, Baidu etc... all have major offices in SV, Seattle, LA etc.
Having a physical satellite office where only a few select people have access to free flowing data is a lot more expensive and inefficient compared to being able to just freely communicate online. It's a bottleneck.
(The chilling effects from software patents alone seem to be very large)
I wonder how the effects compare.
There are more people in China than in the United States, Europe, and Russia combined. China already manufactures your clothes, chips, computers, phones, and missile chips. I don't think it's correct, given the world's dependence on China, to say China is somehow behind the times (wrt computer innovation).
And as you mentioned, tightening of control by different governments around the world seems to indicate that we have found a common trend and its not the liberal one...
I was going to ask who are China's Hannah Arendt et al., but I think that answers it then. So, no meaningful innovation as far as I'm concerned. Just widgets and refining processes and extracting resources and moving money. In the conversation of minds about ideas and ways to live, that's like one hour in one afternoon. It's like a hamster wheel some are forever trapped in. Another revolution of the wheel isn't progress or innovation. Kind of like taking heroin isn't like seeing your child cure cancer.. it's a shit substitute that attaches to receptors that can be used much more meaningful. It's kind of tragic that the best one can say about China is that it repeats the mistakes of the West, without even something like popular rock music, not to mention the Blues. Innovation? Who is the Chinese Jimi Hendrix? Bill Hicks? Not that the man eating machinery of the US can take credit for people who emerged in spite of it, and I bet there's a lot great underground stuff in China (there is Chinese punk, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fseb62y_Vmc ). But on the shiny toothpaste commercial level it's being discussed here? There's nothing, there's a gaping, howling absence of anything worth any of the murder and destruction of the mind entailed by totalitarian control. None of those "achievements" justify even a single peasant clubbed to death. Those who don't know that, in the West or East or on the moon, are still just cavemen in jet planes.
1. It didn't say China lacks innovation.
2. It is not critical of China as a whole. It is critical of the ones making stupid, selfish laws in China out of fear, which imo will hurt growing innovation in China.
3. If there's no shortage of Chinese innovation, why is there so much fear of 'inferior' outside competition?
[1]: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chinese-scholars-w...
Maybe I should read less English-language media on the subject.
The same thing happens in the U.S on another level. This isn't necessarily a case the choking of the free flow of information and censorship, but I think we've all seen a steady increase in the future being delayed for the now.
Around a month ago, there was an question on HN discussing train automation and why it isn't already done as it seems much easier to automate than other forms of transportation. A first-hand account commented that it was because unions have been fighting to block it to keep their jobs; stalling innovation and future growth.
The mob needs to be controlled for progress to be protected.
So what if the right-wing people in charge had the same ideas as you? Several democracies with cancerous social media networks have been teetering on the brink of left-wing national socialism, the mob needs to be controlled.
What we dislike about fascists and their ilk is not the right-wing or left-wing part, it is how they deal with those they disagree with. Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler, Mao for more than Stalin, neither of them right wing. If you were able to enforce what you suggest, you would be worse than those you oppose.
But you are right about democracies devolving in certain times of stress. How about this statement instead? "The mob needs to be inspired by the self-sacrificial service of good leaders for progress to be made"
They are are the bread basket of the Western tech world's hardware though. Does anyone else have the facilities and expertise to churn out that hardware that the dominant West tech giants rely on? Couldn't you argue that they are already innovating?
With Huawei, Xiaomi and BBK they don't need the West's hardware designs. And being able to cherry pick successful ideas of the West's tech companies they have the best of both worlds. And with a population of over a billion people it seems like the West's tech giants need them more than the other way around. I am not saying I agree with their polices just that I don't see how they don't find those policies concerning.
It's a horrible idea, don't get me wrong, it is just that it doesn't look like it is going to be the end of them.
Not sure about this, they're pretty prolific at sending their students out to learn from others. They've also invested a lot in their universities recently.
Also maybe innovation is a bit overrated? So far China's been doing well being the "world's giant copy machine", and learning from our mistakes to see what really works.
I'm not ready to rule out the idea that China has become a global power because of, and not in spite if, the way that it controls citizens.
Talking about innovations, there are few areas where China is ahead of the whole world - like AliPay and WeChat payment systems. I am wondering how you gonna explain China's success when its GDP surpass United States one.
Is it that impressive vis a vis Western Tech?
Partly.
The exception is that the Chinese are pretty good at this stuff, and that 'blocking foreign companies' simply let's local companies dominate.
'SnapChat' and 'What's App' are no innovation. For the most part.
They are mostly just 'chat apps'. That's it.
Ok, Snapchat does a 'really good job' at the 'visual storytelling part'. But China does not need that cutting-edge level of social interaction for a few years until someone copies it well.
They'll do fine.
China is actually big enough - and their techies are talented/aggressive enough - that they can get away with a lot of these shenanigans.
You obviously have a good point though.
Yes - in particular, consider that China has more people than North America and Europe together, so a Chinese "domestic" firm has quite a market.
People decry Trump for his words on 'starting a trade war' with China.
I am no fan of Trump or Bannon - but on this they are right: we are already in a trade war.
Blocking companies from participating arbitrarily, making it 'very difficult' for others, currency manipulation, capital controls, outright theft of IP.
This, in any other situation is a trade war.
Imagine the EU just says 'no Google in Europe'. That's crazy. It's a trade war.
Because back in the 1980's, the world basically let China do as they please because they were 'rebuilding' (think Japan or Korea after their wars) - we sort of got used to it.
But if China is going to play this game (hey, it's their right), then there should be a response of some kind.
Responding to 'trade intransigence' is not a 'trade war' - it's just tit for tat.
Won't happen though - as big USA corps are so greedy to want a big massive slice of the magic unicorn dangled in front of the by the Chinese gov, they shut up and 'kow-tow' :). It's changing maybe a little bit though, what I'm saying is not new, it's just not spoken that much publicly.
For some interesting insight see Charlie Rose w/Richard McGregor:
Yeah blocking a foreign competitor is going to be terrible for innovative Chinese startups.
Why wouldn't the manufacturer of next best mouse trap like to sell the product in China if whatsapp is banned?
As far as Chinese government is concerned there is no downside to banning whatsapp.
It's not like whatsapp has turned into substitute for Nature for scientific publication.
Many capitalist companies like the controls of communist China. They find it easier to do business in. Does that make China more innovative for new businesses compared to open monitoring in the western world?
Is Apple going to move manufacturing to USA because China banned whatsapp? hell, no.
China gets to make an example out of whatsapp to make smaller players play by their rules, giving auditing powers and speech controls to Chinese government, or get locked out of 15% of world's emerging market population.
Lesson to progressive liberals of western world, appreciate what you got here and work to protect it, instead of insulting western values at every opportunity.
While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back thousands of years, and the desire for social harmony and stability which in part enables strict government control through tacit public acceptance is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.
It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes. The foundational political philosophy taken for granted in the West has no parallel in China. Their political philosophy is grounded in a very different hierarchy of values.
Neither did South America but they were inspired by all of them when they formed their modern republics after the various revolutions, after kicking out the Spanish rulers in the 1800s the military generals had a choice to form democracies and they sought inspiration from Europe, just as America did a century earlier...
Almost every European country had a legacy of monarchy, Japan with their Empire, etc. There's a long history of centralized control in every culture. Why is China unique?
The problem is China went the authoritarian route, the party defines the culture, it's not a natural phenomenon of the people. It won't matter if there is a shift towards liberalism when people don't have a choice.
Not to mention Hong Kong and Taiwan aren't far from China's core culture yet they respect liberalism. Chiang-kai Shek could easily have won the war against Mao and it's entirely possible their culture would look a lot more like South Korea or Japan and less "Chinese".
People downplay the complete and total effectiveness of government controlled media and propaganda campaigns. This idea that Chinese culture is just different from the 'west' is exactly what is forced down the Chinese people's throats, it's the party line - not an original concept. The "chinese way" is what they constantly use to justify their repressive actions. While any time anything bad happens in the West they promote those acts widely in the media as examples of the flaws of the western worldview, while thoroughly suppressing their own flaws... so I'm highly suspicious when I hear this excuse.
What are you talking about? South America was colonized by the Portuguese and Spanish, which most definitely come from the western liberal tradition.
It's fine to take a position against "Chinese culture", but it should be an honest one.
Mao's success I think reinforced some the idea that the only way for China to stand on its own was to be united and strongly controlled and maintained. The hundreds of years of having different clans pre-Mao (or weak dynasties like Qing) just didn't work.
While I might not completely agree with their arguments, it's worth understanding Chinese criticism and their skepticism of the West. China is literally 4x the size of the US with a very rich and complicated history and thinking, so we can't just assume you can put in Western democracy/thinking just like that. Sure a lot of it may be encouraged by the party, but I think a lot of is much deeper than that.
As for Taiwan, I think it is important to remember that, while Chiang Kai-Shek was seemingly "less Chinese" than Mao, the two had many similarities. Like Mao, Chiang Kai-Shek was a believer in socialism and nationalism, with his own cult of personality. He also was responsible for his own purges early on and was very much a dictator. While he had support from many international countries, he was only slightly more liberal than Mao (which probably had to do with a number of factors, but I think it's important to note that he was educated in Japan at one point). It was not until after his death that Taiwan became democratic, and I think one of the reasons for this was because Taiwan had aligned itself with Western countries when it was driven out of mainland China. Had the ROC won and the PRC lost, I don't think much would be different here. It's possible to say that the fact that the ROC was anti-communism contributed to these changes, but Chiang Kai-Shek was by no means a supporter of democracy. To me it seems like the deciding factor for Taiwan becoming less authoritarian was almost certainly due to their defeat, and that the PRC would very likely follow in those same footsteps had the roles been reversed.
That all is to say that, despite the differences between Hong Kong/Taiwan and mainland China, the PRC is extremely representative of Chinese culture. The modern values of Taiwan and Hong Kong are obviously very different, but had different circumstances played out (Taiwan winning/Hong Kong becoming an independent Chinese state rather than becoming a colony) I do believe that these countries would end up nearly identical to modern China.
I would not want to the one in charge the day after. Obviously (moderated) rule by the people is best but not sure how China and say countries in the mold of Saudi Arabia will handle it.
People hiding behind each other and in hierarchies is no less dysfunctional than people plastering over the holes in their souls with material goods and what have you, and harmony is a complete stranger to both, at least as I understand it. When I speak with a human being who wears a saddle of some kind, has some kind of dirt on their lens, peace enters my mind after the conversation, after the fake, uptight, unhappy circus leaves town and me with my mind and the world around me as it is, not as overly fearful people inside it want me to describe it.
Taoism is anti-authoritarian in the extreme. Buddhism is significantly more neutral on the subject but is definitely aligned closely with personal liberation and at minimum it does not make special exceptions for authorities. There are many famous incidents involving Bodhidharma trying to disillusion authority figures about their own authority.
So I disagree with you that there are no Chinese philosophical traditions that are anti-authoritarian or that promote individual liberty. There are, but they are losing right now.
Would you count Mozi/Mohism among them?
And what about after the Han synthesis? Confucianism and legalism seem to have tempered the anti-authoritarian Taoist ideas.
Tradition Tibetan society, for example, seems very hierarchical to me.
I was quite young around the time of Tienanmen Square, but I seem to recall a Statue of Liberty and a lot of talk about democracy, before the protests were crushed. I wonder how Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes would have fared in the face of the equivalent state suppression.
The thoughts of Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes are taught nearly in every university and there is no culture of conformity. People seem to simply not care, or are afraid to speak their minds.
When was the last time the Chinese elected their leaders? the fact that they are "used" to this doesn't mean they approve. If there is a consensus, then let the Chinese people sanctify it with a democratic vote.
How about Lao-Tzu? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi
What are you talking about? The west has completely accepted surveillance by it's governments. The ideas by Locke, Rousseau, or Hobbes have 0 effect on western society. If you think western society is an 'freer', it's only because it's the perfect illusion created by your echo chamber.
It has nothing to do with an echo chamber. The laws are objectively very different.
Comparing surveillance by the NSA to information accessibility in general is disingenuous at best.
In short, history explains, it doesn't justify. And this can be explained even better by a closed oligarchy wanting to stay in power.
Edited to add: Modern Western countries have had experiences with autocracy as well. Do you think there's some deep cultural reason Germany went Nazi which sets it apart from France or the UK? How about Spain and Portugal?
Thank you for showing me a new word: essentialism. It sounds philosophical, which is a kind start... to then calling the bs.
Really? We do. Everyone here seemed okay with censorship on twitter, facebook, etc.
> It is an explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict government controls than the West.
Where in the "west" are you? We have censorship and controls in the US. And last I checked, europe is even worse with their controls.
> It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes.
Britain did and britain is at the forefront of censorship, control and monitoring of its population.
> The foundational political philosophy taken for granted in the West has no parallel in China.
It's empty words we used to pretend we are "superior".
Asia is about a lot more than social harmony and the mandate of heaven. There is an incredible diversity of opinion on almost any subject there, just as in the West.
[1] Citation needed.
In the context of today, it's important to remember who the teachers and adults in China are: people who grew up under the Communist government. And with more respect towards the older generation, historically China has had a hard time rebelling against social norms ingrained in their culture. Trying to do away with Confucianism isn't a question of how many people are involved when the elders were all indoctrinated in those ideas by a Communist regime. Even if half the young population of China had independently stumbled upon papers describing these Western cultural values, spreading the idea is impossible when it goes against the CPC's core values, defies the ideas of the older generation, and is completely foreign from what was taught in school.
The fundamental difference between the West and China here is that China has always been under a strong, conservative leadership that these ideas have not been able to permeate. To think that China could simply pick up ideas from Western philosophy misses the point.
Interestingly this also partly explains why totalitarian Communism spread easily in China... Chinese culture was conducive to that philosophy.
Over the last several decades, these rulers have done a lot to open China to the world and lift the totalitarian restrictions of Maoism.
This process has been the greatest poverty reduction program of all time, and thus it would be easy to mistake it for altruism, or at least a belief in governing in the common interest.
This theory, however, fails to explain much of the Chinese leadership's behavior, and I submit that self-interest is a superior theory.
The wealthier and stronger China becomes, the wealthier and stronger its rulers become. Thus it is generally in the rulers' interest to make China wealthier and stronger.
But if something would make China wealthier and stronger, but could loosen the ruling clique's grip on that wealth and strength, then it is against the rulers' interest and they will act to prevent it.
This is why China often acts as though it values technological leadership, but continually takes measures such as these, which undermine that leadership.
The result, as several in this thread have pointed out, is that China will not soon be the world's leader in cutting-edge technology.
But China will still be rich. And China will still be strong. And China's rulers will still be in power.
I suspect it isn't ultimately driven from a political power calculation, but on what areas of open growth are available. Cutting off WhatsApp keeps open growth available in that area internal to the nation. But as areas close off and get filled, economies have to start making harder choices about where to put effort. It's easy to commit to long-term society wide efforts when it's easy to forsee improvements _and_ personal profits. But as choices get harder to forecast and make good on, will China start looking shorter term and with a more narrowly focused self service scope as many western economic leaders have done.
I wonder. When the inevitable downturn comes the population won't have the option of voting out the current government. They may well turn to other means.
Generally when the new generation becomes old enough , it would have never seen why people are afraid of the rulers so much, then it becomes a situation of a showdown.
Though it doesn't always have to end with a bloody outcome, for instance Spain went from dictatorship to democracy quite peacefully after it's dictator died in 1975.
"The Chinese government is blocking South Korean companies from leaving China while prohibiting assets from being taken out of China without any standards. In addition, Lotte and other large South Korean corporations are also having difficulty in their withdrawal process as the Chinese government demands huge compensation from South Korean companies restructuring their human resources management structures...
South Korean manufacturers have been not allowed to bring production facilities back to South Korea. The Chinese government has banned South Korean manufacturers from transporting simple production machines to South Korea from China while designating them as "equipment that adversely affects the Chinese economy."
http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-e...
I went to China around 2012:
* Facebook was already blocked
* Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for "tiananmen"
* Gmail worked fine
I returned in early 2017, oh god what a change:
* Don't even think about Facebook
* Ironically Facebook messenger worked until my session expired
* No gmail, google at all (don't remember about Wikipedia)
* Whatsapp worked fine
And now it is even getting worse....
Also, a random tweet I saw today apparently with a recording of China's CCTV surveillance system:
https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160
No wonder China wants to be #1 in "artificial intelligence". Surveillance and censorship are likely the primary motivators for that.
As for sync, the Chinese companies selling there have their own cloud services and whatnot. This isn't an issue at all.
I mean even countries in the EU are taking Facebook to court over unauthorised online tracking of citizens [1]. The only difference with China is they have the power to do something about it, which is skip the legislative overhead and get straight to the business of blocking access.
I disagree with censorship of this kind; However, I wonder how the US would like it if the shoe was on the other foot?
[1] https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/spain-...
Here's a list of websites blocked in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...
They block Wikipedia. Hardly a mass-surveillance system. The Chinese government is neanderthal.
Hmm I find this hard to believe because the massacre is known as the June Fourth Incident. "tiananmen" is the location, and blocking that would seem a bit strange for people trying to find directions, etc.
Tiananmen Square is what the massacre is referred to as in the United States
Now if you search for Taylor Swift's most recent album, TS 1989, well, that's kind of blocked also. Not sure why :)
My hosting was working perfectly and not blocked at all since I could SSH there. Then I realized that I had some jquery loading from a Google CDN and of course the cdn was banned there. And of course CSS fonts from google and youtube videos didnt work either...
I learned 2 lessons.
1) dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access. Host everything your self and check that your hosting or any of the mirrors can be accessed everywhere.
2) How long Google tentacles are (and we always keep forgetting)...
So don't rely on CDNs for their primary purpose?
- Google being blocked in China is out of their control regardless of their "tentacles". It's well know, try another CDN.
- As already mentioned, don't use a CDN for the purpose CDNs exist. Thats really baffling to me.
Sorry, this post wasn't so productive but I'm really confused by OP.
There are users in other countries, users in corporate intranets, users on Amazon Kindle devices, users on open source Android ROMs.
None of these will have access to the required Google services.
But we can’t make apps without them anymore.
What's mildly disturbing is that many Chinese Americans, both American citizens and not, living in the US use WeChat. They use it because of their cultural and social ties with China. Chinese tourists as well have had increasingly better integration inside the US as well, which would only serve to spread the usage of WeChat to anyone who interacts with Chinese tourists. Tencent is slowly but surely gaining a foothold inside the United States as they roll out more features abroad that made it popular in China.
Are they suspect to these controls as well, despite not being within China? More importantly, whats the legal status of a Chinese corporation with the capability of invading its users privacy under Chinese law, if some users are neither not in China or not Chinese citizens?
Atleast, in china, there is none of this advertising BS.
WeChat working in the US is like UnionPay working in the US. Ya, its great if you are a Chinese tourist or an expat with a Chinese bank account, but it is irrelevant if you aren't, UnionPay isn't going to start taking over the American ATM card market.
A lot of western people are now probably frantic to get the WeChat addresses of the Chinese people they only had on WhatsApp, so they can ensure their production line or development people are on track.
We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.
> We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.
Disagree. They still want our business, they will find ways to make it through the disruption. China is not ready to close itself from the rest of the world economically.
Actually the problem is that the west has no higher moral ground than the east. Not a single US person here uses a chinese app or plans to use one. There is a reason for this.
1) Married Priscilla Chan
2) Learned Mandarin
3) Joined Tsinghua University
4) Befriended Xijinping
5) Offered to let Xijinping name firstborn
Personally I have trouble believing 1 and 5 were to get Facebook products into China unabridged. 5 sounds like a joke at a dinner party.
This guy's baby is just another tool huh?
this guy is nowadays' Don Quixote, one person against a powerful government and really made a crack there, this battle has been on for 8 months and it gets more and more interesting as he is challenging the most powerful group of men in China with corruption evidence gathered over the years,each case is weighted more than 100 billion dollars wealth.
to give you two incidents over the last 8 months: 1. VOA(voice of america) live interview with him was stopped in the middle as the leaked info is too strong. 2. youtube was DDOS-ed-to-death for a while when he started live streaming two months ago, which is said never happened before.
Does anyone know of a simple workaround that would allow someone inside of mainland China to regain access to what's been blocked recently?
we live in an age where we should ask: what did Microsoft have to give China's leadership to make Skype so much more attractive to Chinese users?
what influence/control within the US can Microsoft offer up to other governments if the price is right?
Anyways, the US probably doesn't care that much as we probably make more on trade with China (even American retail marks up China-sourced cheap items), that we don't find it worth rocking the boat over this. Also, by keeping out international services, Chinese services never face competition to become worldwide competitive, meaning they are basically leaving the rest of the world to established mainly-USA players.
Question is why wouldn't the US block Chinese sites, apps and services like WeChat, Alibaba, Baidu, etc?
If US blocked those sites, nobody would care, except those with ties to China. However, it would be easy to circumvent with VPNs etc., unless of course the US duplicated the GFW.
At any rate, that's rather antithetical to US values.
They cannot even do a simple search with Google. It's frustrating for me, I can only imaging how is for them. I'm even worried to raise the issue to not jeopardize their jobs.
Really sad.
Not having to build your own Facebook (and WhatsApp, etc.) means that you can build something else that can (eventually) compete internationally.
China isn't being irrational here, but there is a tradeoff between growth and security.
There is no right answer to that. I'd prefer to go to a place that has no camera, and go to a party/event that no one is fucking around with their phone cameras, but I guess I'm just old.
They don't trust Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg or any of the US government. Letting their citizens chat on an encrypted channel made by a foreign "superpower" seems disingenuous.
It's not as if Americans are going to boycott Chinese goods, so I don't see any direct loss for China here.
That Chinese people cannot choose what they use and how they can live their lives online what is private and what isn't is the biggest issue with the WhatsApp move along with other services.
It would be sad to be Chinese living in China as the government takes choices away from me and my people.
It wouldn't have to use images, it could use any data in the system or even spread it amount mutilple apps within WeChat.
By the way, a couple suggestions if you haven't used WeChat:
1) There is a really nice, canonical one pager out there for explaining WeChat to Americans, I highly recommended it.
2) Its important to note that WeChat despite its name, is miles away from being a simple chat app. It's an entire platform, almost OS like, complete with its own apps within an app. Their platform is incredibly rich, to the point that any significant business has some services available or at least a presence.
Before going to China on business I hadn't heard much about it, and only knew it existed because of some Chinese friends. However if you are planning a trip to China, go ahead an install it now because it's ubiquitous.
There is an English version and last time I checked it was reasonably up to date, although seemed to be missing a few features.
I remember back in the days, when you wrote "fuck" in Skype from China and it would get censored. Which one is a trusted messenger these days?
They don't need any 'specialized software'. You can just block the list of hostnames and IP address, found here: https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking-WhatsAp...
They shouldn't be allowed to take over companies too.
Still, china could be a bit more fair and symmetrical in our trading relationship.
It seems all google products were blocked including gmail and google voice which are my primary means of communication.
Are there many Android users in China?
The United States has such a huge trade deficit with China, you would think the government would fight for whatever little "export" they can get, whether it be a technological export or otherwise.
So chinese will miss those OTHER OPPORTUNITIES to innovate (even if still innovates, it could be "even better"), or other opportunities to "copy cat" other services. The question is: who should decide whats done and whats not done? The consumer or the government?
Read Bastiat. It's easy and obvious to point at something that's being built by government or (indirectly) by the government intervention. The hard part, that needs some economics stretching, is to wonder about the invisible, non-existing projects that actually are never felt missed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages
Regular Chinese citizens get jailed for 50+ years all the time for doing things online. If you are foreign, they can revoke your visa.
When (not if) it goes off, it'll not only be a huge shock to the world economy, it'll most likely also result in huge unrest inside China. The only political tool the communist party has known is to suppress dissent. I expect things to get worse in the next few years... not better.
We now know not only did that not stop China, it's not clear that the ceiling of economic success of their system has been determined.
Why would China block things? Various excellent reasons are discussed in this thread, and they all boil down to political and commercial.
Are the Chinese people harmed? I would argue not. None of these "services" do anything really important nor irreplaceable. Most are just new spins on ancient tech like email and FTP, and the new versions that are blocked don't really have any differentiating features compared to what is available locally. The feature that is new is Digital Identity.
And so my final thought is that they are playing a long game with respect to digital identity - which is the long game of most of these blocked services. In Cyberspace, am I going to be Chinese or American? I aM not Chinese, but I expect that most Chinese will want to also be Chinese in Cyberspace, and so the Chinese government is fulfilling that desire.
You specify which of your We-Chat friends shall get your facebook updates and the bridge middleware takes care.
Instagram, etc. wouldn't refresh.
What if people used a decentralized service, that worked over https?
$ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
facebook.com A 8.7.198.45
$ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
facebook.com A 243.185.187.39
$ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
facebook.com A 243.185.187.39
$ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
facebook.com A 46.82.174.68
$ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
facebook.com A 59.24.3.173
that sounds great until you realize that most people don't run tls servers on their computers/phones. so running one would immediately raise suspicion. not to mention that if they can block tor/vpn, they can block whatever tls chat service you have as well.
http://thehackernews.com/2017/09/china-vpn-great-firewall.ht...
In the race to control what people say, think and see, between the governments and the mega corporations, it's the people who are losing.
China blocks whatsapp... meh.
Censorship is a weak attempt at mind control, which is a bit worse than chattel slavery on the list of heinous things that humans do to one another.
Not only that, but in order to implement it effectively, you must be omnipresent, with a finger in every ear and a hand over every mouth. The concentration of power necessary to do that is an open invitation to corruption.
If I had significant influence over US trade agreements, the degree to which ordinary citizens had open and unfettered access to information would factor into every last one of them.
Watching them try to ban bitcoin (another US invention) is more interesting.
Sorry mate, your submission didn't catch the fire of the kindling; no need to repost it here.
What's the end game here? In the early 2000s it seemed like China was going to become this liberal democracy, but it just seems like the government is getting more and more power and control. Is there any sign this (and the rise of several authoritarians) is gonna stop?
This made me think of Fukuyama (1989):
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
That looks really funny in hindsight. He's actually changed his position:
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama-on-...
These acts are desperate measures to control people because they know how bad things are going to get.
They need to be able to control the channels of communication to stamp out dissent.
How could they possibly monitor millions of messages sent per hour? Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some protest, or plot??
Do they need 100% accuracy for it to be effective? Nothing of this sort is, and that's accepted as part of using it. Of course people work to minimize false positives and false negatives, but it's understood that they can't be reduced to 0.