When China Rules the Web

Indeed, I can't help but agree somewhat with Xi Jinping:

> Finally, China has promoted “cyber-sovereignty” as an organizing principle of Internet governance, in direct opposition to U.S. support for a global, open Internet. In Xi’s words, cyber-sovereignty represents “the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation and Internet public policies, and participate in international cyberspace governance on an equal footing.” China envisions a world of national Internets, with government control justified by the sovereign rights of states. It also wants to weaken the bottom-up, private-sector-led model of Internet governance championed by the United States and its allies, a model Beijing sees as dominated by Western technology companies and civil society organizations. Chinese policymakers believe they would have a larger say in regulating information technology and defining the global rules for cyberspace if the UN played a larger role in Internet governance. All four of Beijing’s priorities require China to act aggressively to shape cyberspace at home and on the global stage.

I mean, Brazil and other countries are pursuing "cyber-sovereignty". The EU's GDPR is fundamentally that. As is Google's latest undersea cable.

I have always loved the cypherpunk vision of a sovereign Internet. But that's very different from a US-dominated Internet, which is what we've had since the start.

Japan. Indonesia. Germany. Australia. Malaysia. South Korea. Lots of countries have had competition and have been able to have localized offerings that won in a free market. But in China. There is no free market.

AWS might be the most prolific. Far better product but it’s useless in China because it can’t be controlled. So China ends up with Alicloud a far inferior product.

The US government is becoming increasingly more paranoid of itself too. The smarter way is things like the EU are doing. Champion greater privacy for local citizens with heavy laws and companies will fall in line. It’s soft governance. You win on both fronts. Controlling data and championing human rights. Closed fists win nothing. If China implemented local data laws with extreme privacy measures Facebook would be forced to localize its offering and keep all data in China whilst fixing a massive public image problem. But it has nothing to do with that. The party is paranoid and will kill competition to control data any day.

The web is already less open from the efforts of US companies developing massively centralised platforms like Google, Facebook, and so on, you're familiar with the story. And they look very eager to play into the Chinese government's rules for their own profit, whilst at the same time paying lip service to liberal principles and internet principles of openness.

At the same time there's plenty of Chinese investment into decentralised cryptocurrencies, probably more so than coming from US investment groups. Some large western companies are doing more blockchain research for sure, but the vast majority of them are only interested in those within the context of their own centralised, privatised, permissioned systems.

Enough of this China vs US crap, your narrative is simply wrong. If you give a shit about the open principles of the internet, talk about the actual projects in reality actually trying to preserve these principles, and stop narrating based on false political boundaries.

Actual subtext of article at hand seems to be that the antagonistic strategy by current US administration will lead not only to inevitable dominance of AI technologies with a distinctly totalitarian flavor. But also perverse side effects.

They may be imagining something like an Alibaba Cloud data center running in Northern Virginia. It may include Party-inspired features such as "content moderation" or "user prediction". Features far stricter than anything AWS or GCloud would be willing or able to provide at similar price. US enterprises (and government entities) themselves will be so tempted to implement these strictures, the coming authoritarian dystopia is all but ensured.

The narrative clearly does not have to unfold this way. US and Chinese entrepreneurs can and will forge amazing partnerships. On a recent web app I noticed about 50% of posts in Chinese. And very much look forward to localizing for the entire region.

Hold on, that's not exactly a fair comparison

The key is you can choose. You can start or not using it like young one quit Facebook.

But can you not use wechat, ... etc in china. No.

You are really controlled by a country which close off its world.

Being in Hong Kong we face the pressure everyday. Strange you have comment here cf USA controlled vs china controlled.

Really?

1984 is a hard novel. Suggest to Read animal farm. You know those pigs. And not need to due with them face to face.

Basically, the US/CA + EU + AU/NZ + JP/SK (among others).

There is no other way to restrain China's ambition to force its illiberal vision of the world on everyone else. They won't rule the Internet and tech world unless that world fully breaks down into very strict isolationism (everyone for their self). China has to depend on a divide and conquer approach, because they'll never be bigger than the world or the developed world. So long as a large enough bunch of nations stick together, even broadly, it'll be enough to impose that China follow a minimum set of guidelines.

This China is no more intimidating than the USSR was at the height of its power. The same alliances will work once again. Even the worse-than-bullheaded Trump Admin has seen the light (which is why they're rapidly attempting to settle trade disputes re NAFTA & EU).

The liberal world is not going to capitulate all of its values to appease China. That guarantees a perpetual conflict of values, which will inherently divide the world into these two large groups. China also can't out-compete and out-innovate the combined developed world, no matter what they do.

In short, China will never rule the Internet. They will only rule their Internet, as they have for a long time. They'll have to play by other terms to be part of the larger, more liberal global Internet; that more liberal Internet isn't going to change to suit China (and hasn't).

Is this not contrary to the western perception of Chinese profiteering entirely? I don't read the chinese paper or anything but China seemed like the last people worried about IP protections.

Ironic given the US government blocking investment from China in US firms, blocking takeovers, blocking China Mobile etc.

(In other words, it is easy to sneer at US control of the internet, but do people who do so actually want the alternative on offer)

“The same streak of soggy half-baked insincerity runs through all 'advanced' opinion. Take the question of imperialism, for instance. Every left-wing 'intellectual' is, as a matter of course, an anti-imperialist. He claims to be outside the empire-racket as automatically and self-righteously as he claims to be outside theclass-racket. Even the right-wing 'intellectual', who is not definitely in revolt against British imperialism, pretends to regard it with a sort of amused detachment. It is so easy to be witty about the British Empire. The White Man's Burden and 'Rule, Britannia' and Kipling's novels and Anglo-Indian bores--who could even mention such things without a snigger?

And is there any cultured person who has not at least once in his life made a joke about that old Indian havildar who said that if the British left India there would not be a rupee or a virgin left between Peshawar and Delhi (or wherever it was)? That is the attitude of the typical left-winger towards imperialism, and athoroughly flabby, boneless attitude it is. For in the last resort, the only important question is. Do you want the British Empire to hold together or do you want it to disintegrate? And at the bottom of his heart no Englishman, least of all the kind of person who is witty about Anglo-Indian colonels, does want it to disintegrate. For, apart from any other consideration, the high standard of life we enjoy in England depends upon our keeping a tight hold on the Empire, particularly the tropical portions of it such as India and Africa. Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation--an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. The alternative is to throw the Empire overboard and reduce England to a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last thing that any left-winger wants. Yet the left-winger continues to feel that he has no moral responsibility for imperialism. He is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his soul by sneering at the people who hold the Empire together.”