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Comment by akramhussein | Hacker News Reader

Travelling in China right now. No Google services work but Gmail via SMTP on my iPhone seems fine. I'm not confident all emails go through though. Heading to Hong Kong tonight so not sure if that will be different. Using VPN does open everything but obviously becomes slower. It's not only Google though, all social media.

Speaking to locals they don't care. There is an alternative for everything and they are better suited to Chinese culture too.

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>There is an alternative for everything and they are better suited to Chinese culture too.

Well good for them, either way with this policy the Chinese government enforces, I don't think China will be able to compete internationally in the software industry.

> I don't think China will be able to compete internationally in the software industry.

That is a very self-centered point of view, in recent european TED talks there were speakers like Mikko Hypponen from F-Secure, that there should be "european" versions of Google, Facebook, so we can avoid all the dragnet datamining etc. unethical web development solutions and NSA spying that somehow pass in the US.

If such products are created and succeed, it will be because they competed well with their American counterparts. The equivalent Chinese products don't face any competition at all.

Chinese companies will push to internationalise their products as the domestic internet market becomes saturated

Depends on how behind they are and how quickly they can adapt to western needs

http://www.fastcompany.com/3029119/most-innovative-companies...

Bear in mind that it won't just be Western markets they target.

To be fair, those products should be blocked in every country. I realize what the PRC is doing: blocking successful foreign corporations, then when they have sufficiently copied / provided for the local market, they expand. Quite duplicitous and I hope it fails miserably, no offense. I feel that the US government might be hesitant to allow Chinese companies, protected by the PRC, access to sensitive information on its citizens.

Point of fact, there is a lot of competition between companies inside of China. In many instances, there is more competition inside China than there is in the US.

So it would have nothing to do with all the legal quagmires the EU is currently trying to drag (e.g.) Google through, such as News in Spain, antitrust lawsuits, right-to-be-forgotten?

China is such a massive place that Chinese players in particular don't need to compete outside china. Two of the largest social networks, QZone and Sina Weibo at >645,000,000 and >500,000,000 users respectively are at the level where they're only smaller than facebook and they're used almost exclusively in one country.

You don't need to compete internationally when you can get that kind of userbase domestically, and the Great Firewall is absolutely and to some extent intentionally a big part of that.

Every Chinese programmer I know, and also all the technical people such as network admins, use a VPN routinely and openly now. That was not the case two years ago, when more Google services worked.

My understanding is the locals mostly want to earn good money and have a reasonable life. And it's dangerous to care about the Greate Firewall. So they prefer to look the other way.

Of course, this way it's only going to get worse over time.

In my experience, internet access in Hong Kong is completely separate, and not restricted by the "Great Firewall".

One Country, Two Systems

Are you using a non-Chinese SIM? In my past travels to China I was able to access Facebook and everything else as long as I was roaming on my AT&T SIM and paying gratuitous roaming fees.

>>Speaking to locals they don't care

Locals don't care that they can't use certain American sites, or don't care that they are intellectually oppressed?

We do care. The problem is: What can we do? Using technical method to get through GFW? Well, it works now but technically, Chinese government controls all Internet facility and they do not even care to block thousands of IPs, even if it means block the whole Internet (It happened in Xinjiang and Tibet.) Moreover, ISPs constantly throttle the international data which means connecting to a server outside GFW may be very slow or even randomly disconnected. In short, any technical solution does not work on a government who controls the country's Internet facilities and does not care to pull the plug. Other solutions? You cannot turn to traditional media like newspapers and TVs, because they are, as well, controlled by the government, which is in turn controlled by a single party. There's also no way to make any meaningful non-violence political influence. The government is not voted by the people so they just don't care whatever their people say. The only possible way is to use violence, but we do not have guns.

"The only possible way is to use violence, but we do not have guns."

Well, there's a few options left, no?

I agree with most of what you said. However, violence can only break the status quo. It does not necessarily lead to a better place, even we do not count the expected ugly process before that. The best ruling party can do is to strengthen the current deadlock. Yes, it is a deadlock. Given our lifespan, there is little light I can see. When the cheap labor margin exhausted, the end game begins. As natives, we know best that what competitive advantages we left except cheap labor. Oh, someone must point out the dynamic domestic market. By that time, it should be pretty much dead already. Those big market caps will totally gone.

Ummm...fight for your rights?

Interestingly, "fighting for your rights" seems to be one of those things that works only when a small minority is doing the fighting. For instance, the American revolution was instigated and conducted by a few discontented landholders, without seeking permission or widespread acceptance from the broader population. If the means for widespread democratic input had existed in the years leading up to 1776, would Washington have been able to mobilize successfully? Or would the mainstream media have been co-opted by the British to proclaim him a "radical dissident" or a "terrorist," hopelessly marginalizing the revolutionaries?

That's the problem that any would-be Chinese or Russian revolutionary faces. Earlier revolutions could be conducted with the involvement of only 10-15% of the population, but these days, you can't do much to change things even with 80% of the population behind you.

The Chinese have never really had freedom, so they've nothing to compare it to. Even if they did, people are doing well over there right now. Any realistic attempt at political change insitgated from outside the political elite would introduce instability and risk for uncertain benefits. As long as China is economically improving there's no real impetus for change. The only protests you get are from those small minorities that are losing out, and that tends to be temporary and/or local instances that are disconnected from one another.

That kind of "rationale" for not having democracy in Taiwan used to be convincing, until finally enough people there were fed up with not having freedom and protested in unison to gain freedom. For that matter, that kind of "rationale" used to be convincing in east Germany, until people there realized that if they acted in unison they could improve their lives still more by gaining freedom. I'm not sure when enough of the masses in China will act in unison at the same time to change the system, and for sure the current ruling Communist Party of China tries to prevent any such united action, but I wouldn't characterize people dissatisfied with the current system as a "small minority," as they probably already make up a majority of the rural population, which in turn is a majority of the population of the whole country.

Sure. Of course the situation could change. I hope it does. But right now people do not care enough to do anything about it, just like people before those other revolutions didn't (yet) care enough. When will that change though, tomorrow? Next year? Next decade? I have no idea, all I can do is relate what I know of the situation over there as I have experienced it.

Just let you know that weight for English as a lesson for students for a long time has been reduced in the curriculum these years. I hated learning English when I was a student. But without it, you have less access to the information and knowledge. It's all about controlling what's in people's mind and feed them with some other stimulations. Intellectually oppressed? I think its priority among average people, even in the developed nations, is not that high.

Power of any government starts with popular support. If you could convince just one fellow countryman that more freedom would make his live better, would make him better, that will be one less pillar for the oppression, and one more for the freedom. It's a daunting task, but it's the only reliable way - persuasion. I wouldn't fault you for giving up and moving elsewhere, just know that there is an option before you do.

"They don't care??!!" There are 1.3 billion Chinese and half of them use the Internet, how many locals you have spoken with? I live in China and am in the IT industry, I know there are a lot people quit using Gmail because the ban, not to say Google Search.

This is just ridicilous.Why would they do that?

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