

China's internet: A giant cage - colinismyname
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574628-internet-was-expected-help-democratise-china-instead-it-has-enabled

======
Wonderdonkey
As I was reading this, I kept thinking, Is this a satire of the American
government? But no, it was just some jingoistic piece singling out one foreign
country.

I accept that the Chinese government is terrible. It's the incredulous "it
would never happen in The Free World™" tone of the article that pisses me off.

Do people believe the government doesn't shut down or freeze individual sites
at will? Been on 4chan today?

Do people really believe the Chinese government has jailed more people for
expression on the Internet than the United States government? Do people
believe the U.S. government isn't monitoring or manipulating the Internet?
Back doors? Warrantless surveillance? Lurking? Subpoenas for user information
without so much as a judge's signature? FISA? NDAA? CISPA? Does the FBI not
track people or pay personal visits to people who say the wrong thing on
Facebook or YouTube or any other social site?

I know we can express more here in the United States than people can in China,
but I really think the feds are using the entire Internet as one giant
honeypot right now, and the lid's just waiting to come down. We know the FBI
collects information on non-criminal activities both in the real world and on
the Internet in the event that those activities become illegal in the future.
(Gore sites, for example, are being watched. It's not illegal to post gore.
But when it becomes illegal, the FBI will have a list of all those people who
posted on the clear Web.)

Do you know how easy it would be for the government to shut down the entire
Internet in America? You have a few wireless operators, all heavily beholden
to the federal government. You have a few cable and telco monopolies. Their
executives and board members are all interchangeable, all part of the same
sphere of influence — essentially a telecommunications cadre. This isn't
accidental.

I say 10 friendly phone calls from the federal government could get 90 percent
of the Internet shut down in this country inside of an hour.

Anyway, they haven't done it here yet. But that's about the only thing that
distinguishes us from them.

~~~
adventured
"I say 10 friendly phone calls from the federal government could get 90
percent of the Internet shut down in this country inside of an hour."

While we're talking about crazy things that would never happen... the US could
have relentlessly nuked the Soviets after Japan immediately post WW2 (by
rushing the further development of lots of more nukes) and ruled the planet
for a few hundred years with an iron fist by threatening to obliterate any
nation that even thought about acquiring nukes or related tech.

That didn't happen either, because it'd have been insane.

The US Govt. couldn't shut down 90% of the Internet in the US because it can't
afford to do so, both due to the extraordinary outrage and financial costs
involved. Aka it'd be insane to do it, and would be like committing political
suicide for the politicians that desperately cling to power.

Lots of stupid things are possible, so what. The US Govt. could have shut down
the Internet in 1995 too. And they could go on a murderous rampage with mini
nukes targeting each metro in the nation. That's about as likely as the Feds
shutting down the golden goose.

~~~
Volpe
In 2000 would you have said "The US could setup a prison just outside its
borders so it could ignore the bill of rights, but it wouldn't - because that
would be insane!?"

The US has been doing some pretty insane things... Yes they haven't Nuked half
the planet, but that pretty far down the spectrum of 'insane'... Shutting
down, or heavily censoring the internet is not...

You do recall what happened to wikileaks in the US, right? Some phone calls,
and Amazon shuts their servers down....

------
guard-of-terra
I think that part of their success is because China a non-religious tyranny.

Muslim countries can't do it because of their hypocritical nature they try to
ban and regulate everything, including things not related to regime's
survival. They set absolutely unrealistic bar and never hit it.

On the other hand, Chinese regime is very pragmatic. They offer their internet
where they only change a little. This they can do without making the whole
thing unusable.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"I think that part of their success is because China a non-religious tyranny."

China's tyranny is religious. Their religion is called "communism", is not
that people in China is free to believe what they want.

If you go to China you will see that family is very strong there, altars for
dead family members are in lots of houses.

~~~
adventured
More specifically they worship the state. They replace god with that (compared
to theocracies).

Communism is a mystical collectivist ideology, that proclaims the magic will
of the people can make the impossible, possible. It pretends to bring reality
under the rule of the subjective whim, such that if enough people believe
something then it will be so. That's classic doctrine however, and it's
questionable how much of that style of Communism still exists in China, they
seem to be far more practical in their application.

~~~
pyre

      | More specifically they worship the state.
    

That's arguable. I don't think that many people 'on the ground' in China
_actually_ worship the state. On the other hand, many people in Muslim
theocracies _actually_ worship Allah, even if they don't agree with every
aspect of the government.

The government didn't replace religion, but they _do_ control it. There's an
PRC sanctioned sect of Christianity. Buddhist monks in Tibet need to be
registered Communist party members.

    
    
      | it's questionable how much of that style
      | of Communism still exists in China
    

It's questionable how much Marxism actually existed from the beginning. I
don't think that Marx envisioned famines starving the poor in his "worker's
paradise."

~~~
Volpe
> There's an PRC sanctioned sect of Christianity. Buddhist monks in Tibet need
> to be registered Communist party members.

You can, and a lot of people are buddhist in china without any interference
from the state.

> It's questionable how much Marxism actually existed from the beginning. I
> don't think that Marx envisioned famines starving the poor in his "worker's
> paradise."

That's like saying "It's questionable how democractic USA is/was given they
had slavery."

And to nitpick, they starved the rich as well ;-) (which is a bit more
marxist)

------
gbog
Have been living and working in China since 10 years. This article is a good
typical case of China misunderstanding. Example:

> Chinese private internet companies, many of them clones of Western ones,
> have been allowed to flourish so long as they do not deviate from the party
> line.

There is not one party line that everyone follows, this was true 30 years ago
but isn't anymore. What we have is a blurry moving red line delimiting the
topics that will trigger censorship.

Germany and France also have censorship. The difference is in the protected
topics, the number of them and the blurrynesss of the lines.

~~~
vorg
> There is not one party line that everyone follows

That's because governments, both China and the US, is made up of people with
opinions. The sort of people that get themselves into government are the same
types of people who use the internet to keep power.

And not just in governments like the US and China, but also startups, VC
funds, IT consulting companies, etc. These same types of people create lots of
pseudonym logins on Hacker News to influence opinion about their products and
services, another form of internet control.

------
elvinj
I think that in the overall scheme of things having a limited internet is
better than no Internet. Having said that I think the chinese peope should
strive for a fully free Internet in china. I know easier said than done..
While working with engineers in China they had FB, which they would access
through vpns. And proxies. Hopefully the day would come soon when do wouldn't
have to resort to that or fear of the consequences of what they write.

~~~
guard-of-terra
There is no choice of "no internet" for them. Oil countries can switch it off
and never notice, but China without internet will have to part with half of
those sweet sweet (and regime-supporting) growth percents.

That's because business communication will be ruined (or won't develop in the
first place) and orders will go somewhere else.

In fact, they will need a commerce pimp - some party with internet (HK?) that
makes deals for them and gives them a fraction of money.

So no, they don't actually have the "no internet" option.

------
knowaveragejoe
The Chinese and other regimes have done much scarier things than simple
censorship by leveraging the power the Internet gives them:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what...](http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what_orwell_feared.html)

------
contingencies
I might buy the Economist this week to read the rest of this report (it seems
this was only the introduction).

As someone who has spent a decade or so in China, I believe that practically
speaking the most obvious measure of control to anyone on the ground inside of
the country (and one that is not mentioned in the article) is bandwidth
limitation.

Quite simply, international links are huge lossy choke-points that make
international services so painful to use that you may as well clone one inside
the country... which will be more readily legally threatened and manipulated
by the state. Combined with purposefully weak intellectual property law, this
in and of itself is a masterful extension of soft power by the party.

(PS. The map of internet penetration statistics looks to me to be largely
bullshit. Internet penetration for urbanites is far greater than 100%, with
the average urban family having at least one internet-connected cellphone
each, more than one tablet device, etc. In smaller areas, people tend to use
internet cafes more often, which hides true penetration statistics.)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I would buy the Economist this week to read this report, but I'm sure the
pages have been ripped out by the authorities. Thankfully, we get full access
to the Economist at work.

> As someone who has spent a decade or so in China, I believe that practically
> speaking the most obvious measure of control ... is bandwidth limitation.

This was true before 2009, but the situation became much worse after the
Olympics when they actually blocked many of the sites we care about. VPNs are
being attacked these days by the GFW as well, or anything that runs over https
(reading hackernews is becoming harder).

~~~
contingencies
> the situation became much worse after the Olympics when they actually
> blocked many of the sites we care about. VPNs are being attacked these days
> by the GFW as well

My experience was that 2012 was the year they really broke the internet with
some forms of rate limiting and other attacks against VPN protocol streams. I
found over the last few months the fastest/simplest way to get reliable
arbitrary HTTP(S) links from within the country on IPv4 was to use SSH with
port forwarding to a squid proxy, ie: ssh -N -L
localport:tertiaryhost:tertiaryport user@server ... then configure your
browser to use 127.0.0.1:localport as a proxy. The old OpenVPN-based
methodology was far too unstable. Tor has been effectively cut, unless you do
the email-hoop-jumping secret and possibly short-lived endpoint request
process and then put up with absolutely pitiful performance.

I suspect IPv6 solves most of the current issues; unfortunately my shot at
getting it to work for this purpose didn't succeed, perhaps due to crappy NAT
devices.

Anyway, I got sick of China's hassle (and economic bubble pricing vs. reducing
quality of life, re: pollution of all kinds, visa hassles, etc.) for the
moment, so moved to Thailand. Internet is so much better here.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I have a good job here; I probably couldn't get anything else like a research
position for a software company (Microsoft Research Asia) anywhere else in
Asia.

Ya, last year was when they really started to crack down on VPNs. Life is
quite harder, however, failure to adhere to IP rights makes local video
streaming sites very useful compared to YouTube, so its not all bad (well, its
not fair to the IP-right holders either).

Beijing is going through some tough times right now; the pollution is driving
people out and preventing people from coming. This is probably a bigger
problem than internet censorship.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"failure to adhere to IP rights makes local video streaming sites very useful
compared to YouTube"

You should definitely register on vk.com after you get off china if it's
important to you.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I would just get Netflix if I went back to the states. I'm happy to be a
lawful consumer of media; I just find things on Youku or Tudou because I have
no other options otherwise.

------
adventured
Given how old, large, and diverse the entirety of Chinese culture is, if it
takes 50 years for the Internet to gradually open up their society and system
of government, it's still a big win. I view it as a matter of time, not if.

