Slashdot Mirror
Beijing Said Facebook and Google Are Welcome Back To China as Long as They 'Respect China's Laws' (qz.com)
Will Facebook and Google come back to China? The Chinese government says they can, as long as they "respect China's laws." From a Quartz report: Yesterday at a press conference held in preparation for the upcoming World Internet Conference, a Bloomberg reporter asked Ren Xianliang, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China (which oversees internet governance) if the government would permit the two American internet giants to re-enter China. Both companies still have business-facing services in China, but Google effectively closed its consumer-facing search engine there in 2010, and authorities have blocked Facebook's social network since 2009. To this, Ren said, "China's internet development has always maintained a policy of openness. As for foreign internet companies, as long as they respect China's laws, don't harm the interests of the country, and don't harm the interests of consumers, we welcome them to enter China, where they can together share the benefits of China's developing internet."
i.e., they give us a lot of money and share data collected
... when your laws start respecting your people.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
China's internet development has always maintained a policy of openness
Can we the people issue a similar memorandum?
China hasn't quite figured out how to steal the code Google and Facebook uses to operate has because it's actually not made in China...
...as long as the agree to China's laws:
Meaning censorship, sharing data on dissidents, funnel money into China and not take any out, agree to let the state quietly execute any employees who speaks bad about the leadership.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
As for foreign internet companies, as long as they help us violate the privacy of our citizens, commit human rights violations and destroy any political opposition. (FTFY)
People equating China and the US have no damn clue how repressive China still is, most especially to it's own people. They have come a long way, but they still have a long way to go. Hopefully they don't decide to start WW3 before they get to a free society.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
..... don't harm the interests of consumers
That's pretty much a deal breaker.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Baidu, Tencent and others have eaten their lunch.
Never.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Message(translate("English", "Mandarin", "go fuck yourself")).sendTo("China");
We've already copied the technology; they should return when they have something new for us.
The CCP has no issue with the concept of social networks. There are Chinese analogs to every US social network: Facebook --> Renren, Twitter --> Sina Weibo, YouTube --> Youku-Tudou, WeChat --> Snapchat/FB Messenger. What the CCP has issues with is social networks to which its censorship officials are not given unrestricted access so that they can remove posts they dislike. China would happily allow Facebook, Google, etc. inside if they get to decide what content can appear on the sites.
Obviously, this would require granting Chinese officials access to the internal source code and guts of their operations; were business and government not completely connected in China, with seemingly every business either state-owned or owned by someone who's the child or close crony of some top government official (because that's how one succeeds in business in China--knowing and bribing the right people!), this would be a semi-major concern. But as things are, it's a stop sign approximately the size of Hong Kong. Given the CCP's whimsical control and ability to control every aspect of commerce, business, and economy, there's little to stop them from letting US networks in, stealing their source code, banning them from the country "for the good of the people" and/or "protectionism," selling the secrets to a Chinese firm, and then having the Chinese firm proliferate the world. In the USA, this is much harder to happen given the much weaker link between government and business as well as the general lack of regulation.
There was a recent article that the Chinese government is beginning to exert censorship on Chinese nationals living abroad by disgracing them and attempting to cut them off from the homeland and the culture they know best. You can bet the CCP has no problems doing this to non-Chinese nationals as well by effecting their standards on the world--control the culture and control the people. Heaven help us all if China ever becomes the dominant nation. It doesn't have to be the USA forever. There are many reasonable countries which can be "#1": South Korea, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand...perhaps an oligarchy of all these countries. Just please don't let it be China or freedom as we know it or imagine it is dead.
Just like we respect Saudi Arabia's "laws".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm not convinced that there isn't any price Zuckerberg wouldn't pay to get back into China. But I also admit that I don't have a great opinion of him.
During this decade I had two girlfriends (not at the same time) who were both born and raised in China ladies. They weren't very fond of the Chinese government, which is why they didn't want to live in China any more. I used to think that a lot of Chinese people were like that. Then I read recently that a Western news agency did a survey in China and they found overwhelmingly that while Chinese people didn't think their government was perfect and they thought that there were some important things that they still needed to do, basically everything was negotiable and they were willing to give it up in terms of personal freedom if they kept making good money. So now I think that the ladies I once dated were the exceptions to the rule and maybe most Chinese people really don't care at all if they have any freedom as long as they're making some sweet cash. This does not bode well long term for western Democracies. Some forces in China in the military are barely under control of the CCP and it's not going to take much to make them go off on their own and start a war that will have disastrous consequences for everybody, including the winners.
Sure. The country that poisons its own babies for profit is worried about Internet companies harming consumers. Fuck off, China.
New search result when you google 'Tiananmen Square'. If they accept.
Citation: Edward Snowden
Whataboutists gonna Whatabout.
People throw around the term corruption so much it doesn't mean anything anymore. If a system plays by its own rules, it isn't corrupt. What evidence do you have that the Chinese system does not play by its own rules?
Make no mistake; there's a reason that Apple has been allowed to succeed in China; they caved fast and easy. That makes Cook's claims that they can't unlock iPhones particularly galling.
Where did that come from? I haven't seen any reporting that China is preventing money from leaving its borders.
Who? I've heard of Google and Facebook, but not that other company!
Any post about China often has a bit of truth and a lot of BS.
There actually is a foregn exchange restriction in place:
--
It should be noted, though, that foreign nationals can transfer any amount under or equal to the equivalent of US$500 once per day without providing proof that the money was legitimately earned or that taxes have been paid on it. Chinese nationals are able to transfer the equivalent of US$2,000 per day into a foreign bank account, however Chinese nationals face a US$50,000 annual ceiling when exchanging RMB into foreign currencies while foreign nationals do not face such restrictions.
--
And like any place with restrictions, there is a very active black market looking to buy/sell foreign currencies at premium rates to get around this.
I can attest that, when I flew home from Guangzhou after spending Spring Festival with the in-laws, nobody in the security screening or Customs at Baiyun tried to take away my several very fat hongbao, which very obviously held a lot more cash than one is supposed to be able to take out of the country legally.
What the Chinese authorities *are* worried about these days are the corrupt businessmen and Party officials smuggling stuff like tens of millions of yuan in cash, gold bars, diamonds, and so forth out of the country, and mainlanders looking to make a quick profit trying to smuggle items that are cheaper in Hong Kong or Macao back to the mainland. At the HK-mainland border, Hong Kongers and foreigners practically get waved through, but the mainlanders tend to receive the fine-toothed comb treatment going both ways.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I think you hear more about methods used than about that overall goal of keeping money inside china. For example they are really sticking it to anyone who tries to import anything to china. Why do you think chinese bring cans of milk powder by ones and twos from Hong Kong instead of you know, just bringing them by sea containers. They will also stick it to any chinese companies trying to buy western companies. They also have quite a few cash control methods.