China Clamps Down on Web, Pinching Companies Like Google

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/business/international/china-clamps-down-on-web-pinching-companies-like-google.html

by digital55 • 12 years ago

63 32 12 years ago

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

This isn't really news is it? Putin and Xi both defining what is and isn't allowed to be shared/said/stored in machines on their soil. The next step can start pretty much at any point, its going to look like the old ARPAnet, where a set of protocols, defined by group sharing a common interest in communication, creates a network that empowers new work and new industry. Back in the 70's the big issues were bandwidth and signalling technology, today the big issues are interference from the government. But from an engineering standpoint its just getting signal through the noise. As I mentioned earlier, UUCP through Tor has a lot of potential for creating a pretty decent source routed email network without central control. Add homomorphic encryption on routing/packet management and you have the basis for building the first network within the network.

chj• 12 years ago

Actually it is a universal problem. Anything that involves a central server or a legal representative will be under government control.

dengnan• 12 years ago

Tor does not work in China. Since their servers' addresses are publicly available, it is quite easy to block.

To access real Internet inChina, it is not only about encryption, nor anonymity. you have to hide the fact that you are accessing a foreign server. GFW has this feature: if a node inside GFW access a foreign address too long/frequently, the foreign address will be temporary blocked. This is a very rude but powerful feature.

1stop2• 12 years ago

Putin and Xi both defining what is and isn't allowed to be shared/said/stored in machines on their soil.

Add Obama to the list.

Lest we forget what Amazon/Paypal/Visa/Mastercard did to Wikileaks on US government request.

fidotron• 12 years ago

There's a tiny bit of substance here, but what's amusing is how out of touch with reality they are on some comparisons. For example:

“You’ve got people spending their time figuring out how to send a file instead of getting their work done.”

This happens in every company with an internet connection.

"That has led to the rise of a number of locally run application stores, which analysts say will sometimes market pirated copies of software or charge extra to promote a new application."

So the piracy problem doesn't happen so much in the west, but the objection here is that simply advertising on Facebook or Google isn't going to get you a global audience because someone has split off part of the market. This is like saying how terribly inconvenient it is that not everyone in the world watches US based TV channels.

oevi• 12 years ago

I live in China (I'm from Europe) and the article is a really good representation of the daily work life here. Without a good VPN service the internet feels like half of the stuff is missing. Ironically the NY Times is also blocked in China.

- "This happens in every company with an internet connection." Yes, that's right. Now multiply this by 100. As described in the article, the internet is not only censored but also unreliable. Some sites work only sometimes, others break silently. If you work for an international company, the websites and services your western colleagues use, will not work for you (dropbox, fb, google, xing, etc).

- "This is like saying how terribly inconvenient it is that not everyone in the world watches US based TV channels" No, the whole point of the internet is to be accesible from everywhere. Advertisers on US based TV channels target an US audience. If I release an Android app on the Play Store, I expect it to be downloadable by everyone with internet access.

esturk• 12 years ago

NY Times has been blocked in China ever since the former released information about the ex-premier Wen Jiabao's family fortune.

iliketosleep2• 12 years ago

I've been living in China, and I can definitely feel a shift here. These days, as an English-speaker in China it's almost impossible to get anything done online without VPN. Google, for most practical purposes, is blocked. Using other search engines, a large percentage of sites won't load when you click on them. Considering the scale and importance of China's economy, the Chinese gov. is moving in an ominous direction.

Kaihuang7242• 12 years ago

My family has done business in China pretty much my whole life, and my take on it is that the Chinese gov. is more or less a bloated system. As the economy grows, greater access is definitely needed and I think top gov. officials realize this, but really nothing can be done in a timely fashion there because of how their politics work.

iliketosleep2• 12 years ago

If they realize it, then why is access becoming MORE restricted than ever before? Ever since Chairman Xi came into power, all I can see is more restrictions and tightening of gov. policy.

dangrover• 12 years ago

I'm also in China and rely heavily on VPNs. Some points on that:

Sometimes I use a VPN not because I'm trying to get to a banned site, but because of general flakiness when using unblocked sites they'd have no reason to screw with. Seems to be some combination of innocuous reasons (CDN/peering issues, bad routers, unusual race conditions in client-side code caused by my weird network) and deliberate throttling. Under VPN, these issues go away.

It seems many people I know (even non non-expats) use VPNs and have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, etc. However, it's a tad inconvenient. Even though I have a VPN one click away, often times I'll opt for a Chinese site/tool to save hassle. Exactly the intended result of these policies!

westiseast3• 12 years ago

Ditto - it used to be up-and-down and now it's just down. I still refuse to use Baidu search because its results are awful and irrelevant, but sometimes....

robomartin• 12 years ago

Human beings... We think we are so evolved culturally and intellectually. Just take a look at what's going on around the world. We are but a step away from cavemen. Sad.

pwarner• 12 years ago

How is this allowed from a free trade perspective? Not to diminish the human rights portion, but even from a purely financial standpoint how does China get away with this?

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

The same way the US flouts free trade agreements: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/17/263101422/why-u-s-...

When you're big enough, the laws don't apply to you.

westiseast3• 12 years ago

More and more I feel like this is pure protectionism and not internal security or censorship.

The Chinese government already has a vice-like grip on the internet and has no qualms about locking up dissidents. We know from the Harvard social network study that they really only care about activism and not criticism. Most of the population has been through the Chinese education system and they are generally speaking apathetic and passive when it comes to politics or the possibility of change. And, don't forget, just like most Western netizens, users are mostly interested in non-political aspects of the web - chatting to friends, getting work done, watching movies online....

The only sense for this blanket ban/slowdown/disruption of big foreign online services seems to be to shelter Chinese companies from foreign competition.

k_sze2• 12 years ago

That does seem to be the case. This July I travelled to the Hubei and Jiangsu provinces. I couldn't get on Gmail or Dropbox without going through Tor.

But I had no problem opening the zh.wikipedia.org (the Wikipedia in Chinese), which has content that the Party decidedly would not like to see, such as the account of the Tiananmen events. And I could do that with HTTP or HTTPS, without VPN or Tor. I'm guessing they don't block Wikipedia because nobody in the population really cares anymore, and Baidu is not making enough money out of Baidu Baike (Baidu's online encyclopedia) for it to matter.

1stop2• 12 years ago

Or perhaps they just edit the chinese version of the wikipedia article to be more sympathetic.

It's not like chinese don't know that tiananmen square happened. They just (generally) don't believe it was wrong.

Also studying the event, it's pretty grey in general. The west's portrayal of it is not without bias.

westiseast3• 12 years ago

yeah - blogs, the UK tax website, news websites (when they aren't intentionally blocked like nytimes) are mostly fast to load, reliable etc. Tech services, especially highly networked/connected services like document sharing, emails, social networks, tend to be slow, intermittent and difficult.

bostan• 12 years ago

sites using google fonts are basically unable to load or takes too much time to load too.

be5invis• 12 years ago

The large-magnitude international relationship structure is changing. The new cold war is approaching.

Therefore the internet -- built in 1990s -- will be splitted. Again.

illumen• 12 years ago

Spy on the Chinese and this is what you get.

iamleppert• 12 years ago

Probably because a lot of people use jquery and other frontend libraries hosted by google, and those (of course) have been blocked by some moron in China. And most sites don't properly handle cases when third party assets fail to load.

riverain• 12 years ago

I'm a Chinese software developer. In China, VPN or other proxy tools are essential for anyone who need look up serious technical materials online. We call it "翻墙"(Go Over the Wall), which is a basic skill.

And about the reason why these sites are blocked: just BECAUSE THEY CAN! (They even blocked github for mysterious purpose once!) There is no public rule/law/principle to tell us why a foreign site is blocked. The just kill sites silently and pretend nobody cares.

Fortunately enough, HackNews has not been blocked, yet.

(Sorry for my bad English)

possibilistic• 12 years ago

Do you think this harms new engineering students in China when they don't have access to tools and knowledge that the rest of the world does? I can't imagine having Github blocked.

Does there seem to be a pattern to the blocks? Or is it just completely random?

2muchcoffeeman• 12 years ago

Maybe it helps weed out the lesser engineers. Step one is trying to work out how to get the information you need.

ddxv• 12 years ago

VPNs are sometimes unreliable too, they seem to be getting blocked/shut down quite often, so lately I pay for two VPNs to try and get around these problems. >.<

China Clamps Down on Web, Pinching Companies Like Google

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