Hacker News Reader

Comment by StudentStuff | Hacker News Reader

There are two distinct internets already, getting bandwidth to move data in and out of China is an expensive proposition, combined with the Great Firewall makes it such that domestic companies have significant advantages compared to overseas competitors.

Those domestic companies seem to be starting to innovate on their own, though there is quite a bit of back and forth between US researchers and their counterparts in China. Whether or not this will translate to commercial success outside the protective walled garden is questionable, thus far we haven't seen Baidu or others break into major markets outside China and keep its apps, websites, etc popular for more than brief blips.

View on HN

>Whether or not this will translate to commercial success outside the protective walled garden is questionable...

Is that something the party cares about? (The Communist Party I mean).

Serious question.

How interested are they in having Americans or Bolivians or whatever engage in the daily use of Chinese internet sites and apps? My sense is that they don't really care about that. It seems that it's more a priority that we, on our part, assume the party has. I honestly wonder if they care?

Well if you want to make money from those other people, or have easier access to whats happening in the world globally, yes.

>Well if you want to make money from those other people, or have easier access to whats happening in the world globally...

Here's the thing though, those people can buy tires or pants made in China, WITHOUT using Chinese websites.

I seriously don't think they care if we use Baidu or not. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the party would PREFER that we NOT use Baidu.

> I seriously don't think they care if we use Baidu or not. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the party would PREFER that we NOT use Baidu.

If the world used Baidu, it would be a propaganda coup for the CCP. They'd have the ability to disappear information they want to suppress (like criticism of the camps in Xinjiang), and freely push propaganda and disinformation (a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion).

Think about it: if the web existing in the 1980s and the Soviets controlled the world's main search engine, the top results for "AIDS" would be disinformation articles about how the US government created it.

So, I'm sure the CCP would like the world to use Baidu, but it might not be high on their list of priorities to push right now.

> if the web existing in the 1980s and the Soviets controlled the world's main search engine, the top results for "AIDS" would be disinformation articles about how the US government created it.

Soviets tended to play up the bad points in their propaganda, so it would likely be pushing images and videos of people suffering with AIDS, captioned with "American pigs aren't researching or treating this mass epidemic ripping through their capitalist stronghold".

The sad part is such propaganda would be fairly accurate, for most of the 1970s and 1980s our government stood by and let people die of AIDS, not funding research or pushing safe sex education, feeding the epidemic.

> Soviets tended to play up the bad points in their propaganda, so it would likely be pushing images and videos of people suffering with AIDS

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

You do realize there is a lot of money in software services correct? It's not about selling pants, it's about selling ads and digital products to the rest of the world, like sillicon valley. Baidu, tencent, alibaba, xiaomi, etc are some of the largest tech companies in the world and thats with most of their business in China.

Not to mention the enhancement in global surveillance it would give the CCP.

There's far more than two internets.

Russian, Japanese, Chinese, South Korean, German, French, Italian, Brazilian. And on and on.

Don't forget the Iranian & Saudi Arabian internets, they all block different things and have restrictions you wouldn't see elsewhere.

For the point of my original comment though, none of these restricted networks are breeding challengers to the established tech giants like the Chinese Internet is. Kinda surprised there isn't an Indian Baidu/Google, or Tencent/Steam.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com