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Comment by yankput | Hacker News Reader

Hm, I wonder what they do in China.

In China they are running their own infrastructure on servers owned by party-affiliated businesses. I wonder how strong their encryption is over there?

China blocks many services with strong encryption but it doesn’t block iMessage.

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Facetime is disabled in China, and on any phones purchased in China.

iMessage worked, last I went there.

Only Facetime Audio calls are disabled. Normal Facetime calls with video work fine with mainland china purchased iphones....so you have to call people using those phones with video even if you just want to talk to them and not see them. It's kind of silly because it's really unclear what actual problem this solves for anyone including the government. Perhaps the goal is to just make enough friction so that no one really uses it.

IIRC it's something to do with needing a license for audio-only telecommunications services. But I also might be entirely wrong about that.

Pretty sure that is related to competition with China Telecom. When I was working in China, it was the same: voice only calls had to be made via our phone and charged according to China telecom rates, while video calls could be made for free.

Seems nobody uses iMessage in China. The stats I can find don't even list it. Maybe they're ok with leaving it as a way for visitors to talk to people at home.

So the CCP is just content to leave this encrypted form of communication controlled by an American company while simultaneously locking down every other avenue of electronic communication? Because “no one uses it?” If no one uses it why not block it then?

I mean, I hope so. Im not convinced though.

People do use it, just not Chinese nationals, so blocking it would only inconvenience visitors. Or because Apple has some special kind of leverage. Can only speculate.

But they can. Easily. And many people have iphones. Just doesn't seem likely that the CCP would be fine with it.

Chinese do use iMessage, although not necessarily deliberately. SMS is very commonly used in China and when a iPhone user want to message to another, the default is to use iMessage instead of SMS. So I did have tens of native Chinese contacts, including my computer illiterate parents, using iMessage back when I was in China and using an iPhone. Also, SMS cost a fee in China for the most popular mobile subscriptions, while iMessage is almost free.

So it is a good question why CCP didn't block iMessage, despite we know that SMS is heavily censored and monitored (see 金盾工程).

Chinese don’t use iMessage with each other much, at least these days. It’s all wechat.

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