Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Internet Users Cross 800 Million Mark (scmp.com)
There are now as many internet users in China as there are people in the United States, Indonesia and Brazil combined. From a report: While two in five Chinese are still offline, the country's internet population has grown big enough to open huge market opportunities for hi-tech companies, and provide the government with better access to keep watch over its citizens, according to an analyst. China surpassed the 800-million mark for the number of internet users for the first time, further cementing its position as home to the world's biggest online community, as the country kept up its investment in infrastructure and pushed to lower access fees. The number of internet users in China rose by 30 million in the first half of this year to 802 million, representing a penetration rate of 57.7 per cent, according to a report by state agency China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) released this week. All but 1.7 per cent of the users access the internet through mobile devices, according to the report.
Best to call it Chinese intranet
It could also be tablets. If I can buy an Amazon Fire 7 for only 40 Canadian dollars on Prime day, I don't even want to think about the price of tablets in China.
#DeleteFacebook
I'm old enough to remember when everyone was saying the internet would safeguard freedom all around the world, even in the worst repressive regimes, because "it routes around censorship". It would empower the individual, so went the narrative.
As we have now seen, the internet is turning into a tool for massive scale repression, censorship, and social manipulation, instead.
Western companies, they want into that sweet, sweet market of 800M, and other big markets where you either play the repression game with the government, or you don't get to taste the pie. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Cisco, others, they will ask "how high" when China says Jump.
Someone always tries to point out how the most technically literate can find a way around, and that is so, but it is of no import. All the Chinese govt, or any other govt for that matter, cares is that the 99% will be under their thumb. "Social Order" will be maintained, defined as them staying in power. Defined as the people not being able to search for terms deemed to cause "social unrest". Not being allowed to even read Orwell because that might give them ideas. Cute dancing babies? Sure, you can see those.
Some battles are being won, but more are being lost. The internet is steadily eroding into a tool of mass social control, aided by western companies wanting more profits.
The war is lost. The only hope is to start anew, and this time not make the same mistakes.
China is a nation of 300 million (USA sized) people attached at the hip to 1,000 million poor third world backwards peasants. To get a handle on this, imagine that tomorrow morning every US citizen woke up with 3 clones beside him. Obviously your reaction would be, "get the hell out of my house, you deplorables!" after which the clones would be on their own with no safety net, no welfare or medicare, and the US government would not allow them to stay in the civilized cities, banishing them to the rural areas (hukou system).
That's basically the situation in China. So these 800 million users are 300 million normal people plus 500 million morons from flyover territory. Needless to say they have little to offer besides cheap labor for the benefit of the capitalists on the coasts. Kind of a metaphor for our own situation in America, eh?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Doesn't the commnunist Chinese government require everyone to use the (Chinese version of the) Internet now, so they can keep track of your loyalty to the Party, make sure you're not a dissident, and otherwise are staying lockstepped with their strict 'guidelines' of behavior? Don't they penalize you somehow if you don't use it enough, because it doesn't give their tracking enough data to work with, like you've got something to hide? Maybe they arrest you if you don't post on their version of social media? Also it seems that Zuckerbook is taking ideas from China now.
when they're cut-off from much of it? it's more like 800 million chinese INTRAnet users with partial, and censored, global INTERnet access-the accessibility of which is at the whim of their government.
800 Million Users; only one political opinion allowed.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Going which way?
Have gnu, will travel.