Slashdot Mirror
China's Firewall Stymies Google; Users Confused
eldavojohn writes "Massive confusion occurred last night for Google's Chinese search engine and ad services when Google's automated reporting system claimed that everything was blocked in China. The problem was that most users experienced no outage despite Google's reports and Google has backpedaled on those reports. Google explained that their tool for detecting blockage is not 'real-time': 'Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it's possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.' The WSJ blogger notes, 'Beijing may not need to cancel Google's license. Death by a thousand disruptions could be just as effective.'"
They are trying to modernize their country and become the premier superpower of the 21st century, and yet they are practicing a 1930s-style fascistic repression of free speech which undermines their scientific and economic development.
Only through free exchange of ideas can a society advance and adapt to changing technology and economic conditions. As long as the PRC government maintains even a partial hold on freedom of speech, suppressing those who call out government corruption and inefficiencies, the people will be unable to experience a sense of advancement of their condition. They'll feel stuck.
Even worse, the jingoistic nationalism which pervades any discussion of international events--the official media's constant portrayal of the Western powers led by the USA as the evil imperialists of the 19th Century, for example, the demonization of anyone who questions the official version of events, the bused-in protest marchers such as the ones who trashed the US Embassy after the Belgrade bombing--these all make China look less stable and give foreign politicians more fodder to oppose China.
Ultimately, any politician in the U.S. who runs on a pro-China platform is going to take a hit in the polls. China today is viewed as a scary, slightly evil place that exports toys with lead, poisonous milk, heparin, and toothpaste, and carcinogenic drywall. It's also viewed as an exploitative sweatshop where the workers are screwed even by the most progressive companies such as Apple. The Tiananmen Massacre (or "incident" as the PRC prefers to call it) is still fresh in the minds of some Americans, though many others have forgotten it in their zeal to buy the cheapest products on the shelf at Walmart.
Google is viewed in the U.S. as a good company that has taken a principled stand on the China censorship issue. Pretty much anything China does today to limit Google's freedom of action is going to be viewed in a negative light by the American public.
There's also the scholarly communication issue. Academics and scientists in China have reported that they rely largely on Google, and they would have trouble doing their work without it. How can China advance technically if they limit the communication and research resources of their top scholars and scientists? It's a fundamental dilemma that the Chinese will need to solve one way or the other. Freedom versus stability. Information wants to be free, and ultimately the Chinese will have to allow more freedom. Whether Google is there is a political decision that has economic implications. The U.S. should be paying close attention to this issue, given our huge trade deficit with China and their almost free ride to prosperity that they have been given on the backs of millions of laid off American manufacturing employees.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
It seems like every week we get an article about how something changed with the Chinese firewall and something broke. I would strongly consider moving if I had to deal with this as often as they do. Stop screwing the with firewall of the country!
This is not the penguin you're looking for.
Death by a thousand disruptions could be just as effective
What disruption? The service continued to work fine. It was only the status page that reported it was down, which doesn't actually impact the service.
The irony here is that the "Chinese" Baidu is just as American as Google.
In case you're too lazy to check yourself: Baidu was founded by a Chinese face with an American passport, Robin Li, he's still the CEO. The board of Baidu is largely American, or at least non-Chinese. The investors are mostly American, it's listed on the Nasdaq, but not on any Chinese stock exchange and IPO'd by Goldman Sachs. Despite the perception here, many Chinese and especially the Chinese government regard Baidu as a foreign private (thats 2 evils) company in every sense.