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China Using Net Censorship As a Trade Weapon?
angry tapir writes "The Chinese government is using Internet censorship as a trade weapon against U.S. tech companies trying to do business there. China's ongoing censorship of the Internet is applied unevenly, with foreign companies often facing stricter rules than their Chinese counterparts, said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. (Of course, a lot of countries aren't thrilled by U.S. net censorship efforts.)"
They took yer job, U.S. government!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This just in: China still operates under non-trivially mercantilist policies; US continues to cede moral high ground on issue as fast as possible at behest of entertainment industries.
News. At. 11.
Enough playing Tiddly Wings with China. Tariff them until our trade between them balances. If we keep rewarding lopsided trade, it will keep happening.
Plus, the US gov't can use the revenue right now.
Table-ized A.I.
They fear outside influence on their populace, but the truth is China will eat its self politically from the inside out, you can not give your population a "taste" of capitalism and expect to maintain the same level of political control, it doesn't work.
So rather than outside influences driving the change it will be the inside influences that do this, they went from “Practice Marxism and not Revisionism” to “Praise profit. Praise profit. Praise profit. Praise profit. Praise profit.”
We live in interesting times.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
That would be difficult, given that China is a member of the WTO. Have been for ten years. A quite influencial member at that. If the WTO did set such restrictions, they would doubtless include a vague statement along the lines of 'States have a right to protect their cultural values through appropriate regulation' that could be interpreted as a licence for China to do whatever they like.
We all talk about how terrible is Internet censorship in China, while in the meantime out own US congress (which by large does no longer represent the interests of US citizens) is considering laws to centralise control of the Internet, in the name of "security" and defending the interest of a small number of companies that heavily lobby on these regulations. This is happening right now, people. Wake up. You can keep criticising China, or maybe you can use that energy to do something about your own country. Or you can wait some years, and try to explain to your grandchildren why their freedom of speech is nowhere to be found.
Nothing unsightly has been done by the US in the last 100 years, that China or Russia have not been outdone several times over in the last 50... Our moral ground is as high as ever compared to the rest of the world's (super)powers.
Nagasaki.
Hiroshima.
Game over.
What is legitimate and what isn't, is often in the eye of the beholder. Or did you mean "legal" (as opposed to "legitimate")?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
(This is hinged of course on SOPA not passing)
I see this as a mistake by the Chinese gov't. The american companies should come back here where we dont' have such (restrictive) practices.
A win-win situation for us.
Course it'll never happen but it's nice to dream
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
is the only time america cares about chinese government censorship is when it impedes the flow of the free market economy.
we censor many foreign products from american consumption based on trademark or patent, we censor our media from covering the
zucatti park raid, and even arrest them. our censorship prevented journalists from photographing returning c130 cargo planes carrying dead
and wounded soldiers during the iraq war, and prevents us from knowing who presidents like George Bush invited to the whitehouse.
our system is a revolving door of corporatocracy from which elites of the upper class are bred for leadership, much the same as china.
rule-in-perpetuity by a single party is really no different than having only two parties to choose from, neither of which accomplish any meaningful
longterm reform or change.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This is nothing like SOPA. The only similarity one can draw is that they're both using unethical methods to protect domestic businesses. However, the Chinese government is protecting their businesses from legitimate competition, whereas the US government is protecting their businesses from illegitimate competition (piracy).
If you allow each country to define "legitimate" for themselves, there is a great similarity between SOPA and this stuff on such an abstract level.
Almost all big computer technology companies have a .cn website- for their Chinese consumers. When I was in China, I tried to open Apple's website in Chinese and it would often not work or crawl. If I open the same website using an open proxy, it would work smoothly.
Computers can reverse entropy.
I don't quite get how sourcing labour in one country then exporting the fruits of that labour to another (think Chinese kids putting iPads together for $0.10 a day to get around US employer taxes then those iPads being sold for upwards of $600 or whatever in the States) can in any way be considered legitimate. OK, so it keeps Chinese kids off the streets (laughably), but child slavery does nothing for the esteem of the country, its perceived Human Rights record (I can tell you right now that the UK is no halo'd angel when it comes to Human Rights), nor its "carbon footprint" compared with per capita GDP.
Pedant point: the term "piracy" has been co-opted by the Entertainment and Media industry from its original meaning which referred to crimes against the Person and Ship committed on the High Seas. The co-opted meaning refers to the unauthorised bootlegging (ie copying and distribution) of recorded works. It has nothing to do with rape and pillage and murder on the High Seas, but it invariably carries a harsher sentence because why? Because E&M owns Government (and writes the rules to serve itself - what would you do in that position?), and E&M controls the flow of information.
When you control the flow of information you can make people believe what you want them to believe and get it to the point where any oppositional thinking is regarded as delusional paranoia, rejected and mocked by the masses, any repitition of which is further regarded as inflammatory and slanderous. Many of those historically considered as evil (Mussolini, Hitler, Gadhafi, Hussein) knew of those techniques and used them to advantage in ways that would (and do) give DHS and MI5 wet dreams.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Enough playing Tiddly Wings with China. Tariff them until our trade between them balances.
That's fine. How do you plan to deal with the large increases in prices of a huge number of goods? A lot of goods are made in China because of cost and it is highly non-trivial, not to mention expensive, to relocate all of that production. Much of the burden of the increased costs of goods will fall on the low income portion of the the population.
Riding your high horse isn't without a cost.
Plus, the US gov't can use the revenue right now.
What revenue? You think there would be no consequences? Raise prices suddenly on a wide variety of goods and you are almost certainly going to send the US economy into the tank again. Tax revenues would plummet much more than any money that would be raised from tariffs.
Here, the Chinese government is deciding which businesses will be featured more prominently on the internet, which makes a big impact on that companies business. I keep getting called a tinfoil hat when I propose that ISPs could do the same thing. But here is a real world example of it. If you can filter and prioritize web sites, you can control business.
Some Web content blocked from appearing on U.S.-based sites in China appears on Chinese sites, he said. In some cases, China has redirected searches through U.S. services to a Chinese service, and its censorship of foreign services drives consumers to Chinese alternatives, he added.
The latter example sounds much like Verizon (and others) who redirect DNS lookup failures to their own search engine.
Stuff from China is poor quality and has a high markup.
That's complete nonsense which doesn't stand up to even the basic scrutiny. I've been to China myself and been in factories where they make parts for Dell, Emerson Electric, and about 10 other Fortune 500 companies with well deserved reputations for good to excellent products. While there is of course some shoddy production from China there is a lot of very high quality manufacturing as well - every bit as good as anything in the US.
I think the low income portion of the population (that spends almost all its money on rent/transportation/food anyway) wouldn't mind paying a little more if it meant they got factory jobs.
Imposing tariffs won't bring jobs back and we're not talking about "a little more". The cost of labor in the US is too high relative to other places in the world. Not just China either. If you cut off production from one location it will simply move elsewhere. China is not the only nation with low labor costs. Cut off production from everywhere else and you screw the economy. You seriously need to learn about comparative advantage.
without a real China bashing post on /. for almost a day, now I feel better.