

Social Coding Site Github Unblocked and Accessible Again in China - ghosh
http://www.techinasia.com/github-china-unblocked-accessible-again/

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biesnecker
Github being blocked for a few days was annoying, but the real story here is
that for a person / company in China, there are no "safe" web services upon
which to build things, no matter how apolitical those services might be.
Anything you build on technology that you need to access over the network is
immediately at risk of suffering a massive, totally opaque, and totally
unfixable (by you, at least) failure. Domestic services are a little bit
better, but (and I say this out of sad experience) not immune. Non-China based
services are just a crapshoot, especially these days.

It's sad and it's frustrating and it really makes you wonder how China is ever
going to really transition away from a heavy industry / copycat technology
economy.

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veidr
I think it is unlikely that China is ever going to really transition away from
a heavy industry / copycat technology economy, until its current government is
overthrown or otherwise replaced.

This is a fundamental problem with totalitarian regimes that oppress their
people. A key part of denying people freedom is preventing free exchange of
information. Happily, though, the leading edge of economic success seems to
increasingly rely on unfettered flow of knowledge and information.

This is, overall, good for the free world, as advances in information
technology yield increased productivity for both organizations and
individuals. It is not that good for autocratic regimes like the USSR and
China, because they have to actively fight the tide of improving technology --
which both consumes energy and keeps their population less
knowledgeable/capable, thereby disadvantaging them in the increasingly
information- and knowledge-dependent modern economy.

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tianshuo
I agree that most of the IT sector in China is copycat. But there is emerging
innovation, eg. Tencent Wechat has no comparable competitor IMHO.

~~~
veidr
I definitely wouldn't argue with you; historically, China is the source of a
huge portion of humankind's inventions, and I am sure there is a great deal of
innovation happening there right now.

My point was more narrowly that the current system of government there, and
the lack of information freedom the automatically comes with it, presents a
serious obstacle for innovative businesses (particularly anything to do with
computing, mobile, and internet, a huge swath of the modern economy).

