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Comment by est | Hacker News Reader

> concerned about China applying soft power to sway western opinions

China blocked Google/Twitter/Facebook with the the same logic.

That's not really the full story though. The CCP was worried about the passive soft power of an uncensored internet. The concern stated here is for soft power resulting from the active influence campaigns and censorship originating from the CCP.

Can Google/Facebook/Twitter be considered "uncensored internet"? To what degree is a culture's view of moderate speech different than its influence of "soft power"?

It's not seperable. The spread of one's cultural values by way of dominating media is a tried and true application of soft power.

Or they could, you know, be a neutral search engine.

Then people would complain that they aren't taking down the Christchurch shooting videos and are condoning hate.

Authoritarian policies thrive alongside tragedy.

That’s why films and TV shows are so powerful. Hollywood is the greatest weapon of American soft power.

And that's why you see so much Chinese influence in Hollywood.

> To what degree is a culture's view of moderate speech different than its influence of "soft power"?

Google/Facebook/Twitter are pretty darn conservative about what they censor. "Hate speech is bad" is technically a cultural statement, I guess, but one I feel wholly comfortable spreading everywhere.

Google are pretty hot on censoring copyright infringement. Which is arguably a pretty western value, and is a direct consequence of US government influence.

Generally speaking, this is a bit different in that violating copyright is illegal, not just in the US but in the foreign countries where Google operates. Sometimes in name only, true, but the government of those countries is still ostensibly saying that they want copyrighted works protected. Google is attempting to comply.

I was also under the impression that impression takedowns were not automatically applied worldwide, although I could be wrong. I know I can often view Youtube videos that were taken down for copyright by connecting to a Russian VPN.

Does that make any difference from the perspective of the nation who feels threatened by the power?

From the Chinese perspective I don't think it makes much difference whether something they perceive to be threatening originates somewhere in the soup of the internet and then makes its way into China or is a concerted effort by a foreign government.

I think the same would be true in reverse, when the Chinese internet would collectively promote material running counter to US interests, say for patriotic reasons, it'd be subject to scrutiny just the same. (In fact historically that did sort of happen to say, pro Soviet American citizens)

Says the person who is probably not among the following Chinese people who would probably disagree:

- 10000 who were killed in 1989

- parents whose baby who were poisoned by melanine-tainted milk

- people who were forced out of their homes by corrupt local officials and property developers

- human rights lawyers locked up without due process even by the standards of the Chinese written laws

The US has its fair share of misdeeds, but it does not blatantly censor the Internet and public discourse.

Don't conflate Chinese people with CPC.

Anyone disagrees with you are sponsored by CPC. That "if" statement works well for you.

- prisoners executed in order to harvest their organs

Or * 1-2 Million Uighurs locked into reeducation camps...uh, sorry, I meant to write "voluntarily attend vocational schools"

How do you tell the difference between passive soft power and active influence campaigns? Consider e.g. the handwringing about Russian troll farms.

China was worried about Chinese people using those sites to talk to each other, in a way that could not be censored. The Chinese gov't is far more worried about that than "Western values" (though that is occasionally a concern).

Based on the moves they've been making recently, I don't think that's true. Investments into Reddit, Hollywood and gaming companies show China is attempting to buy influence and soft power. China knows that if it gets sanctioned because of its actions, such as Uighur concentration camps, it faces internal unrest and possible revolt.

Soft power influence out and defensive action against influence in are two different ball games. Again, I'm not denying that the Chinese gov't is worried about a general miasmic incursion of foreign values, just that that's relatively low on their list of concerns. I think it once was a bigger deal to them, but they've since realized that it's not such a danger.

Thing number one is preventing their own citizens from communicating and organizing among themselves. Thing number two is the international soft-power push, mostly aimed at muddying the waters of public discourse enough that they are no longer the unquestionable bad guy (the goal here is simply to damp down international criticism). Preventing the spread of "Western democratic values" and "universal human rights" in China is a concern, but probably doesn't make third place, or even fourth.

I'm not sure that this is so accurate. GitHub is not blocked at all and neither was Reddit until recently. The recent "996" debacle on GitHub has demonstrated that Chinese people are able to "talk to each other" through these foreign sites with no trouble at all.

China (and a few other authoritarian countries) have blocked and attacked GitHub numerous times due to repos that are critical of the government or help bypass censorship (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub).

But blocking GitHub has proven to be very costly so they're often forced to revert the decision. That's why GitHub appear to be the perfect place to host and promote truthful content (e.g. wiki articles about tiananmen massacre, xijiang concentration camps, etc) along with detailed instructions to bypass censorship. Right now it appear that at best China can prevent a specific URL from being shared on weixin/weibo/etc but can't stop people from opening the repo if they find a creative way to share it after (e.g. put the link in an image and modify the image slightly to change its hash before sharing it).

GitHub was blocked in the past but it was unblocked after much protest from Chinese developers

It's incrementally more difficult to use GitHub outside normal working hours.

Then why would they sponsor Chinese owned media in London?

Maybe they're both right.

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