Behind the Great Firewall: What It's Really Like To Log On From China

alphadogg (971356) writes China makes headlines every other week for its censorship of the Internet, but few people outside the country know what it's like to live with those access controls, or how to get around them. This IDG News Service writer has lived in China for close to six years and censorship has been a near constant, lurking in the background ready to "harmonize" the Web and throw a wrench in his online viewing. It's been especially evident this month. Google's services, which don't follow the strict censorship rules, are currently blocked. How long that will last is unknown, but it coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests earlier this month — an event the Chinese government wants no one to remember.

Comments

meanwhile, the west buys the same mechanisms...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you get your panties in a bunch, i am NOT equating the censorship situation in China to the US.

But here in the west, hundreds of millions fall all over themselves to buy the latest Apple or Android shiny. And what does that mean?

Apple holds an iron grip over what you are permitted to run on your device. So far, they have just used this control to prohibit things that "compete" with other Apple products, or which "violate the harmony of the device", like new launchers, or E-book readers that let you read the Kama Sutra. But it's the same underlying mechanisms of control over computing devices.

Or you buy an Android device, and Google logs everything you ever do with the damn thing. Has all your email. Recordings of your voice. Where you were when.

None of that means we're in the same state as China. But it DOES mean we can get to the same state as China, with but a tiny little step. A small change of government, a public moral panic, a new terrorist attack, whatever the excuse is. We're building all the mechanisms. Then we're buying them like good little sheep.

Maybe we should look to China as a warning for where this goes.

Re:meanwhile, the west buys the same mechanisms...

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Well, the women are awesome. The rest of it? Sure, the government is pro-business and pro-capitalism, except its THEIR business and capitalism. In China the govt officials are the ones with the money, and LOTS of it. Corruption is astronomical. Unless you're in cahoots with some guys with a lot of 'face' you aren't going anywhere, and you can bet they get the fillet mignon cut of whatever you build. It makes the tax rates in the US quite equitable. There's LOTS of red tape too, though of course again how much that matters depends on whom you are connected to. The middle class in China is microscopic. If you were in downtown of a tier 1 city then you might get the impression, surrounded in your nice westerner bubble, that there were lots of well-off people around, but if you actually went out and met the regular Chinese people and talked to the people serving you food and selling you things and made friends with them you'd find out that life for the average chinese is pretty rough. Now go out to the countryside, or even tier 3 cities (prefect level towns for instance) of which there are 1000's and you find there's only a very small veneer of 'middle class' people.

As for the economy being 'robust', the banks all collapsed in the late 90's, ALL of them are insolvent. Most of the major businesses, same thing (the state owned ones). There's a whole zombie financial and economic sector that is just propped up with tax money or patronage in some form or other. There are a lot of businesses, yes, and a huge export sector, lots of growth, etc. There is also 300 million underemployed people, etc. The realestate bubble in China is 10x the size of the US one, and its teetering right now. Frankly I'm out, and I'm getting my g/f out too before something busts loose and it goes down like the US did in '07. Even the big financial analysts are looking pretty scared now. Housing is slowing and China is going to have a big bump.