
China Blocks WhatsApp - GuiA
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/business/china-whatsapp-blocked.html?mcubz=3
======
chaostheory
What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their
power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and
useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g.
Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by
his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but
it happens a lot more often since there are a lot more opportunities to share
ideas with much fewer restrictions.

The end result is that China's fate as being relegated to being the world's
giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert

The people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are
somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. This is already
true, but its importance will grow as China's censorship grows.

The more China closes up, the less Western companies have to fear about future
tech dominance or crazy innovation from China in the long run

To be fair, things may even out since Western governments seem to be doing all
they can to copy China's censorship and gov control. SOPA, PIPA, SESTA, and
the Digital Economy Bill come to mind. I'm sure others can add more to the
list.

~~~
Certhas
Alternative:

Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political
regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions
to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster.

Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal
society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself
off to the rest of the world, but stays integrated in the markets, as well as
the academic exchanges.

The Chinese government doesn't stop high tech investment, but only blocks a
few select companies that have products that are, at their core, easy to
replicate (WhatsApp, Facebook, to a lesser degree Google) at a sufficient
level of quality.

Rather than free markets pushing towards a more liberal politics, the Chinese
government develops means to make the market optimize for political obedience
[1].

Most people individually will consider themselves "free enough", and not care
about politics as long as the country is well managed. Nothing stops you from
starting to research or trying to build self-driving cars in China [2]. China
will continue to manage to hire western talent for its firms [3] until
whatever skill gap still exists is filled.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/goldman-says-china-has-
talen...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/goldman-says-china-has-talent-data-
and-infrastructure-to-embrace-ai.html)

[3] [https://qz.com/1062035/half-of-the-top-10-employers-of-ai-
ta...](https://qz.com/1062035/half-of-the-top-10-employers-of-ai-talent-in-
china-are-american/)

~~~
gaius
China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides
they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being
the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think
they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and
previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look
spacewards.

~~~
FabHK
Not entirely implausible. That's in a sense what they did after they sent out
Admiral Zheng He with a fleet of ships and thousands of men in the early 15th
centuryas far as East Africa - they concluded "meh, nothing interesting
there", and shut down the whole program.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He)

~~~
vorg
The funding for Zheng He's voyages was pulled because Ming China needed the
resources to defend against renewed attacks from the north, i.e. Mongolia and
Siberia. Because Britain is an easily defended island and the Iberian
peninsula has the Pyrenee mountains acting as a defensive wall, England and
Spain didn't have this type of problem when they sent out their fleets.

~~~
lookACamel
What about the Dutch?

------
meri_dian
Edit: This is not a justification or defense of internet censorship. It is an
explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict
government controls than the West.

While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of
individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their
leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back
thousands of years, and the desire for social harmony and stability which in
part enables strict government control through tacit public acceptance is
deeply rooted in Chinese culture.

It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke,
or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes. The foundational political philosophy taken for
granted in the West has no parallel in China. Their political philosophy is
grounded in a very different hierarchy of values.

~~~
dmix
> It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke,
> or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes.

Neither did South America but they were inspired by all of them when they
formed their modern republics after the various revolutions, after kicking out
the Spanish rulers in the 1800s the military generals had a choice to form
democracies and they sought inspiration from Europe, just as America did a
century earlier...

Almost every European country had a legacy of monarchy, Japan with their
Empire, etc. There's a long history of centralized control in every culture.
Why is China unique?

The problem is China went the authoritarian route, the party defines the
culture, it's not a natural phenomenon of the people. It won't matter if there
is a shift towards liberalism when people don't have a choice.

Not to mention Hong Kong and Taiwan aren't far from China's core culture yet
they respect liberalism. Chiang-kai Shek could easily have won the war against
Mao and it's entirely possible their culture would look a lot more like South
Korea or Japan and less "Chinese".

People downplay the complete and total effectiveness of government controlled
media and propaganda campaigns. This idea that Chinese culture is just
different from the 'west' is exactly what is forced down the Chinese people's
throats, it's the party line - not an original concept. The "chinese way" is
what they constantly use to justify their repressive actions. While any time
anything bad happens in the West they promote those acts widely in the media
as examples of the flaws of the western worldview, while thoroughly
suppressing their own flaws... so I'm highly suspicious when I hear this
excuse.

~~~
tryingagainbro
Serious question: what would happen if China abolished the Communist Party or
whatever they call and chose democracy. Chaos? Breakdown of the country into
separate states /provinces? Civil war? Military rule?

I would not want to the one in charge the day after. Obviously (moderated)
rule by the people is best but not sure how China and say countries in the
mold of Saudi Arabia will handle it.

~~~
frandroid
What is "China" in this case? Its government is the Communist Party. It's not
going to abolish itself!

The question to ask, if you want China to change, is to ask how would the
Chinese Communist Party lose its grip on power. That would probably need to
happen following an economic crisis. However, looking at how badly the
Chavistas are driving Venezuela into the ground these days, and how much
they're able to hold onto power, you can see that it's not easy to get rid of
a government with a lot of resources. The boiling frog theorem applies here. A
sudden shock, sudden famine, sudden economic turmoil is what's most likely to
create the conditions of regime change.

~~~
KGIII
To take the analogy a bit further with the boiling frogs, the frogs jumped out
of the water, until Goltz removed the brains from the frogs.

So, how does that relate to China? Well, if they still have brains, they will
reach a tipping point as the water warms. More closely, so long as they have
access to information (I think) they will eventually decide that enough is
enough.

So, then the question is do they have enough information? Do they have enough
freedom to communicate with each other?

It's hard to say. I've been to China and I think the answer is actually an
affirmative. They have plenty of information. They all know about the GFW, the
censorship, and how it is different than the West. They don't appear to be
under any illusions.

I've spoken, in person, with multiple people in China and they all know those
things, as well as being up to date with their current local and national
politics. It's hard to describe, but they just seem to accept it. I don't want
to say they see it as a good thing, but they all pretty much say that it is
for the national harmony.

They know about Tianamen square. They even have a special word for censorship
- river crab, though I forget the reason. They know about the death penalties.
They know about the corruption of local and national politicians. They seem to
be as aware of their politics as much as we are aware of our own, maybe even
more so.

It's a different mentality, I guess? They accept it and think it helps promote
social harmony. It wasn't easy, and still isn't, for me to get my head around.

~~~
fspeech
"River crab" is homophone with "harmony", an euphemism for censorship.

As for why people accept the situation, one can probably start with "Nash
equilibrium" (I chose not to use the term "prisoners' dilemma" as that could
project uneeded connotation in this context).

~~~
KGIII
Near, thanks. I'd had it explained to me, but had long since forgotten.

It was very different to go there in person. I expected an undercurrent of
political unrest and dismay with the things like censorship. It really didn't
seem like I met anyone willing to vocalize serious displeasure.

------
bryananderson
This event is an amazing lesson in what China's rulers see as their interests
and how they pursue those interests.

Over the last several decades, these rulers have done a lot to open China to
the world and lift the totalitarian restrictions of Maoism.

This process has been the greatest poverty reduction program of all time, and
thus it would be easy to mistake it for altruism, or at least a belief in
governing in the common interest.

This theory, however, fails to explain much of the Chinese leadership's
behavior, and I submit that self-interest is a superior theory.

The wealthier and stronger China becomes, the wealthier and stronger its
rulers become. Thus it is generally in the rulers' interest to make China
wealthier and stronger.

But if something would make China wealthier and stronger, but could loosen the
ruling clique's grip on that wealth and strength, then it is against the
rulers' interest and they will act to prevent it.

This is why China often acts as though it values technological leadership, but
continually takes measures such as these, which undermine that leadership.

The result, as several in this thread have pointed out, is that China will not
soon be the world's leader in cutting-edge technology.

But China will still be rich. And China will still be strong. And China's
rulers will still be in power.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_And China 's rulers will still be in power._

I wonder. When the inevitable downturn comes the population won't have the
option of voting out the current government. They may well turn to other
means.

~~~
splintercell
This almost always happens. Because in order to achieve what they have
achieved, they had to give their citizens a certain amount of freedom.

Generally when the new generation becomes old enough , it would have never
seen why people are afraid of the rulers so much, then it becomes a situation
of a showdown.

Though it doesn't always have to end with a bloody outcome, for instance Spain
went from dictatorship to democracy quite peacefully after it's dictator died
in 1975.

------
cousamfee
It's not just censorship, China is now openly engaged in economic warfare of
foreign companies within China, closing up the Chinese economy, and preventing
foreign companies from competing fairly.

"The Chinese government is blocking South Korean companies from leaving China
while prohibiting assets from being taken out of China without any standards.
In addition, Lotte and other large South Korean corporations are also having
difficulty in their withdrawal process as the Chinese government demands huge
compensation from South Korean companies restructuring their human resources
management structures...

South Korean manufacturers have been not allowed to bring production
facilities back to South Korea. The Chinese government has banned South Korean
manufacturers from transporting simple production machines to South Korea from
China while designating them as "equipment that adversely affects the Chinese
economy."

[http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-e...](http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-exodus-
china-s-korean-companies-suffering-omnidirectional-retaliations-china)

------
rubenbe
This is getting really strict.

I went to China around 2012:

* Facebook was already blocked

* Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for "tiananmen"

* Gmail worked fine

I returned in early 2017, oh god what a change:

* Don't even think about Facebook

* Ironically Facebook messenger worked until my session expired

* No gmail, google at all (don't remember about Wikipedia)

* Whatsapp worked fine

And now it is even getting worse....

~~~
yuncun
>* Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for
"tiananmen"

Hmm I find this hard to believe because the massacre is known as the June
Fourth Incident. "tiananmen" is the location, and blocking that would seem a
bit strange for people trying to find directions, etc.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
If you search for Tiananmen in Google, the first result is 6/4\. Most
westerners associate Tiananmen with the event more than the place.

Now if you search for Taylor Swift's most recent album, TS 1989, well, that's
kind of blocked also. Not sure why :)

~~~
yuncun
Wow that's hilarious

------
victornomad
Last year I went to China, wanted to show a web project I had in internet and
it didnt work at all.

My hosting was working perfectly and not blocked at all since I could SSH
there. Then I realized that I had some jquery loading from a Google CDN and of
course the cdn was banned there. And of course CSS fonts from google and
youtube videos didnt work either...

I learned 2 lessons.

1) dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access. Host everything your
self and check that your hosting or any of the mirrors can be accessed
everywhere.

2) How long Google tentacles are (and we always keep forgetting)...

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
> dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access

So don't rely on CDNs for their primary purpose?

~~~
nilved
Yes.

------
Joking_Phantom
WeChat is the replacement for WhatsApp, fully compliant with Chinese
censorship controls.

What's mildly disturbing is that many Chinese Americans, both American
citizens and not, living in the US use WeChat. They use it because of their
cultural and social ties with China. Chinese tourists as well have had
increasingly better integration inside the US as well, which would only serve
to spread the usage of WeChat to anyone who interacts with Chinese tourists.
Tencent is slowly but surely gaining a foothold inside the United States as
they roll out more features abroad that made it popular in China.

Are they suspect to these controls as well, despite not being within China?
More importantly, whats the legal status of a Chinese corporation with the
capability of invading its users privacy under Chinese law, if some users are
neither not in China or not Chinese citizens?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The only users of WeChat have strong ties to China, and use it for those ties
(e.g. WePay). Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those
reasons.

WeChat working in the US is like UnionPay working in the US. Ya, its great if
you are a Chinese tourist or an expat with a Chinese bank account, but it is
irrelevant if you aren't, UnionPay isn't going to start taking over the
American ATM card market.

~~~
yourapostasy
> Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons.

Before someone asks, the approximate equivalent of WeChat in Taiwan is Line.
Don't know what it is in HK.

~~~
PresidentObama
The equivalent of WeChat in HK is WhatsApp.

~~~
richardknop
Lot of people in HK use Wechat (I have lived in HK). I wouldn't say it's so
clear cut. LINE is also popular. But definitely Wechat is substantial
especially since there's a lot of people from mainland and also if you got
friends in Shenzen, you will use Wechat. I have seen many HK locals (born in
HK, not immigrants from mainland) using Wechat.

------
creatrixcordis
I visited China for a month and my view is limited, but i do not think the
average Chen in China cares about this, just like the average John in America
doesn't. They are happy to be able to grow their personal GDP as much as they
can. A lot of people there are part of the waves of the population that are
provided incentives to relocate from rural areas to urban areas. Censorship is
their least concern. They are happy to be able to have access to new products
and start businesses and help their kids develop as best they can. Throughout
my travels in other countries in Asia, i met a few students which will be
going to Chinese universities. One of their reasons was that Chinese
universities have bigger budgets for research compared to their respective
countries. So that was highly attractive to them in their educational
development. From walking around i got the impression that China inflates
their GDP by constant construction and tear down and construction again. I am
inclined to believe that this happens also in the tech industry. This churn
creates jobs, companies in a loop and makes the economy look stronger that it
actually is. I also saw many empty apartments and was told about this as well.
Imagine how much money China would loose if people would solely use western
alternatives of the apps they currently use. This GDP churn they have going
there could not be done if your population is using solely western products. I
do think there is an economic reason as well. I happen to like WeChat, you can
do many things with it. I watched this dude i met there buy a hat from a
street vendor and payed her with the app, super easy. The convenience that is
baked in that app is awesome. I wish we had something like that in the US.

~~~
mads
I lived in China for many years and you are right. Most Chinese people
reaction will be "Meh.." and they will move on with their life and just use a
VPN if they really really need WhatsApp.

A lot of western people are now probably frantic to get the WeChat addresses
of the Chinese people they only had on WhatsApp, so they can ensure their
production line or development people are on track.

We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I lived in China for 9 years and could never find a working VPN that would
last more than a month. So I just didn't bother using anything outside of
work. It was ironic that I worked for Microsoft, would use Bing at home, and
used Google at work because...I could.

> We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.

Disagree. They still want our business, they will find ways to make it through
the disruption. China is not ready to close itself from the rest of the world
economically.

~~~
usaar333
Did you ever use Shadowsocks in lieu of a VPN? AFAIK, it suffers no traffic
disruption (worked great for me when I connected to either my own US-based
house or an AWS server in Japan)

------
dukoid
I don't get how China can have WTO "Market Economy" status. It's not just
blocking western internet companies, also forced joint ventures and technology
transfers don't sound much like "Market Economy" to me.... :-/

~~~
sureshv
Developing nations get a lot of leeway - see India's FDI restrictions, etc.

------
Jerry2
TechAltar made a video few days ago about censorship in China and what their
goals are [0]. He also talked about lengths to which Mark Zuckerberg went to
try to get Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp unblocked in China. It was quite
shocking.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs)

~~~
ben_jones
The 5 points according to the video:

1) Married Priscilla Chan

2) Learned Mandarin

3) Joined Tsinghua University

4) Befriended Xijinping

5) Offered to let Xijinping name firstborn

Personally I have trouble believing 1 and 5 were to get Facebook products into
China unabridged. 5 sounds like a joke at a dinner party.

~~~
jimmies
#5 is really low. I cannot believe someone who did that is a great person.

This guy's baby is just another tool huh?

~~~
balls187
The story goes Zuckerberg asked President Xi to give his unborn baby an
Honorary Chinese name.

Which still seems gross, but perhaps less so, given the baby would likely have
a more common American name.

~~~
jimmies
Even it's the "backup" name, it's not like his wife or his wife's parents are
incapable of coming up with a meaningful Chinese name for the child. It's his
choice to go ask the president of China to choose it for him (and his wife -
if she is like "I am not interested in choosing a Chinese name my child"?).

I can understand this on a personal level. Yeah, I'd understand, If, say,
Obama was my friend, I'd want to "ask" the ideas of his for my child's English
name, when he comes to my family dinner, sure...

But asking the Chairman of China publicly in a dinner just shows he does care
a lot about who has power. Not a friend, not a great thinker, but a fucking
president he has a chance to have dinner with the first time. And publicly
with many other people. If I'm being cynical, then at least doing it his way
was really quite distasteful.

------
ausjke
there is an extra but critical reason that I somewhat know why the censorship
is getting tougher these days, it has something to do with
[https://twitter.com/kwokmiles](https://twitter.com/kwokmiles)

this guy is nowadays' Don Quixote, one person against a powerful government
and really made a crack there, this battle has been on for 8 months and it
gets more and more interesting as he is challenging the most powerful group of
men in China with corruption evidence gathered over the years,each case is
weighted more than 100 billion dollars wealth.

to give you two incidents over the last 8 months: 1. VOA(voice of america)
live interview with him was stopped in the middle as the leaked info is too
strong. 2. youtube was DDOS-ed-to-death for a while when he started live
streaming two months ago, which is said never happened before.

------
aorth
I would say WhatsApp could use domain fronting like Signal, but that technique
requires the adversarial government or ISP to decide that blocking
Google.com—or whatever large, important domain is doing the fronting—is worth
the cost to block WhatsApp. But China definitely doesn't care about blocking
Google!

[https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/](https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/)

------
technologyvault
Over the past several months, I have had increasing difficulty communicating
with suppliers and business partners in China, who have become very frustrated
that they can only communicate via Skype. All of their VPNs seem to have been
shut down. They can't access Facebook, YouTube, and now WhatsApp.

Does anyone know of a simple workaround that would allow someone inside of
mainland China to regain access to what's been blocked recently?

~~~
kawera
Not sure if this would work for you but still... After having a lot of
problems communicating with my business partners in China, I bought a second
(cheap, chinese!) phone and installed WeChat, Weibo and a host of other apps
on it. It became my chinese "channel", completely isolated from my main phone.
Working pretty well so far.

------
ChuckMcM
This feels to me like the war on the Internet has entered a new phase.

~~~
badosu
Next step should be enabling censored services to citizens with 4-star+ social
scores.

~~~
stuffedBelly
reminds me of the 1st episode of the latest Black Mirror season.

~~~
spookyuser
It's like a really ugly combination of that episode and the waldo episode

------
spullara
We (the US) have to start treating the blocking of our internet applications
as trade embargoes. They are the future of our economy.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
China does not officially list the websites it blocks for this reason: they
don't want to turn it into a WTO case. If you ask China telecom why Facebook
isn't working, they'll say...must be Facebook's fault.

Anyways, the US probably doesn't care that much as we probably make more on
trade with China (even American retail marks up China-sourced cheap items),
that we don't find it worth rocking the boat over this. Also, by keeping out
international services, Chinese services never face competition to become
worldwide competitive, meaning they are basically leaving the rest of the
world to established mainly-USA players.

------
hw
I'm curious if this is really censorship or just a play to further enhance the
position of Chinese messaging apps' monopolies.

Question is why wouldn't the US block Chinese sites, apps and services like
WeChat, Alibaba, Baidu, etc?

~~~
FabHK
Cross-border chats that previously used WhatsApp will now be forced to switch
to WeChat, and thus be subject to Chinese gov't monitoring. Also leading to
more international installs of WeChat.

If US blocked those sites, nobody would care, except those with ties to China.
However, it would be easy to circumvent with VPNs etc., unless of course the
US duplicated the GFW.

At any rate, that's rather antithetical to US values.

------
amadvance
I interact daily with colleagues from China, and I think it's a lot more
problematic to have work resources blocked than WhatsApp.

They cannot even do a simple search with Google. It's frustrating for me, I
can only imaging how is for them. I'm even worried to raise the issue to not
jeopardize their jobs.

Really sad.

------
rubatuga
It makes sense, as a country you wouldn’t want US companies taking over your
social media. It’s only alarming from a US centric view.

~~~
corndoge
I hope this is a joke

~~~
zaro
Well it's very valid reason. Companies like Google and Facebook do influence
their users, and do define how they interact.

So banning the big tech companies is kind of protection against this, as US
influence can be really toxic for local businesses. Even the EU starts to
fight back against them.

------
Animats
Naomi Wu's comment on China's surveillance: "That's basically the social
contract. Someone grabs your purse, you go to the police station, they show
you the video, usually catch them. ... Honestly, I hear more anger on
Weibo/Wechat when there's _not_ camera footage of a crime than any unhappiness
over cameras on the street etc."[1]

[1]
[https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en](https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en)

~~~
HillaryBriss
the UK does _tons_ of video surveillance of public spaces. much much more than
the US, where cameras are often low-res garbage, broken or hacked for use in
botnets.

~~~
Animats
In the UK, if you're robbed can you go to a police station, see the video, and
get the cops started on finding the robber?

~~~
HillaryBriss
i don't know about that.

i do know that some UK police departments have officers watching some public
spaces in real time. they can sometimes recognize and intercept known
offenders before a crime occurs.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1)

------
hellbanner
Lot of posts about the economic effects of this. From my armchair this looks
to be political more than economic. China wants to be in control of how their
citizens communicate.

They don't trust Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg or any of the US government.
Letting their citizens chat on an encrypted channel made by a foreign
"superpower" seems disingenuous.

It's not as if Americans are going to boycott Chinese goods, so I don't see
any direct loss for China here.

------
blondie9x
Too much concern about if China can innovate and create Western alternatives.
I don't think it's about that at all. It's about privacy and the freedom to
choose.

That Chinese people cannot choose what they use and how they can live their
lives online what is private and what isn't is the biggest issue with the
WhatsApp move along with other services.

It would be sad to be Chinese living in China as the government takes choices
away from me and my people.

------
theylon
I'm in a relocation in China for the past 2.5 years, and it was obvious this
is coming since they released end to end encryption back in 2016. China is not
a democracy, surveillance is one of the most important issues in China (see
link), and allowing their citizen to talk outside of their reach of
surveillance is unacceptable. Wechat - the so-called Whatsapp + Facebook all-
in-one app (Wechat can be the only app on your phone) is a 1) fantastic app
and extremely innovative, Many things to learn from it in the west. 2)
perfectly demonstrates how the Chinese government pushes for centralization,
for the sake of government supervision. (have all the users in just one place,
talking to their friends, ordering food, flights, trains, paying for
everything, ordering things online etc.

*[https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160](https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160)

------
WhitneyLand
Why can't steganography be used on top on the Chinese government endorsed app
(WeChat)?

It wouldn't have to use images, it could use any data in the system or even
spread it amount mutilple apps within WeChat.

By the way, a couple suggestions if you haven't used WeChat:

1) There is a really nice, canonical one pager out there for explaining WeChat
to Americans, I highly recommended it.

2) Its important to note that WeChat despite its name, is miles away from
being a simple chat app. It's an entire platform, almost OS like, complete
with its own apps within an app. Their platform is incredibly rich, to the
point that any significant business has some services available or at least a
presence.

Before going to China on business I hadn't heard much about it, and only knew
it existed because of some Chinese friends. However if you are planning a trip
to China, go ahead an install it now because it's ubiquitous.

There is an English version and last time I checked it was reasonably up to
date, although seemed to be missing a few features.

------
mads
Big news. Which one are safe now (in US and China)? Telegram??

I remember back in the days, when you wrote "fuck" in Skype from China and it
would get censored. Which one is a trusted messenger these days?

~~~
FabHK
Signal. Maybe Wire.

------
rahimnathwani
"The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China’s censors may have
developed specialized software to interfere with such messages"

They don't need any 'specialized software'. You can just block the list of
hostnames and IP address, found here:
[https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking-
WhatsAp...](https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking-WhatsApp)

------
NicoJuicy
I'm seriously wondering why we open up our markets to China, if they won't
ever allow our companies to thrive there.

They shouldn't be allowed to take over companies too.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Many of our companies do thrive in china, and the rich people in the USA make
lots of money off the arrangement. Don't think for a second that the
relationship is one sided.

Still, china could be a bit more fair and symmetrical in our trading
relationship.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Perhaps you are not aware of how hard it is to get your money out of China.

And others end in 'partnerships'

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Having done it myself many times, I'm totally aware. Thankfully, as a
foreigner or foreign company, I only need to present tax receipts. Still a
PITA, but there are no hard limits at least.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Haven't ever done it, but at least I see it's a PITA. As I thought :p

------
styfle
I had a long layover in Shanghai recently and was a bit surprised that so many
of the web sites I use regularly were blocked.

It seems all google products were blocked including gmail and google voice
which are my primary means of communication.

Are there many Android users in China?

------
knubie
Why does the US allow China to block so many American technologies? To me this
is almost akin to banning the import of American cars, or any other domestic
export.

The United States has such a huge trade deficit with China, you would think
the government would fight for whatever little "export" they can get, whether
it be a technological export or otherwise.

------
swfsql
This is just wealth destruction. Government intervention will create an
artificial higher demand for those services. Maybe the same developers would
be building something else that THEY would believe would be about more
interesting or profitable.

So chinese will miss those OTHER OPPORTUNITIES to innovate (even if still
innovates, it could be "even better"), or other opportunities to "copy cat"
other services. The question is: who should decide whats done and whats not
done? The consumer or the government?

Read Bastiat. It's easy and obvious to point at something that's being built
by government or (indirectly) by the government intervention. The hard part,
that needs some economics stretching, is to wonder about the invisible, non-
existing projects that actually are never felt missed.

------
Chiba-City
I have no privileged state secret information to disclose. But a former
employee of mine (and Orbital Sciences, NSA before that) was in Queen Noor Of
Jordan's entourage. WhatsApp was one of the dominant messaging apps in the
Arab Spring aftermath. I suspect the miraculous purchase price might reflect
that. I could be wrong. Boy genius working class hero miracle narratives
should be discounted however possible for better business lesson learning.
WhatsApp is a rounding error in China and likely a genuine military or trade
secrets security threat. Our proclamations of self-identity as guardians of
democracy are as important to us as our own enforcement and good example.
Focus on what and who matters where.

------
Crontab
It’s like China and England are competing to see who can have the least amount
of Internet freedom.

~~~
cybertronic
oh, but England "had Locke,... or a Hobbes" (see comment above)

------
ProfessorLayton
I wonder if steganography + encryption will be the way past internet
censorship.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages)

------
revelation
Does OpenVPN still work, in normal or PSK mode? I wonder if at some point
their filtering gets smart enough that they will just turn it over to a
whitelist, or worse, straying too far from the "norm user" gets you a visit
from police.

~~~
barkingcat
Regular openvpn sees disruptions. They sniff out the ip addresses that sees
vpn traffic and blocks them. You can get a different ip and have it run (or do
multi-encapsulated tunneling), but in my opinion, nothing about this issue is
technological. At the very end, if you try to evade too many times, the
government just tells the telco not to sell any internet access to you. Or get
the police to show up at your residence.

Regular Chinese citizens get jailed for 50+ years all the time for doing
things online. If you are foreign, they can revoke your visa.

~~~
htrp
If you are foreign, in a first tier city, just pay for the corporate internet
(the unblocked version) in a lot of office districts.

The government knows that the expats aren't their customer for censorship,
they just want to make it inconvenient enough for their citizens to get to the
new york times or the scmp.

Have people actually gotten visa's revoked, that would be a crazy escalation
by the MPS.

------
DigitalSea
China has been going on a ban spree lately. First, they turn the Bitcoin and
cryptocurrency world on its head banning Bitcoin and other restrictions and
now WhatsApp is being banned. What is banned next?

------
chetanahuja
Chinese debt is a ticking time bomb. [http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-
debt-risk-to-financia...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-debt-risk-to-
financial-stability-2017-9)

When (not if) it goes off, it'll not only be a huge shock to the world
economy, it'll most likely also result in huge unrest inside China. The only
political tool the communist party has known is to suppress dissent. I expect
things to get worse in the next few years... not better.

------
bigbang2017
In fact, this is the government's conspiracy. Now WeChat a lot of data by the
government control, always monitor people's remarks. Why to prohibit whatsup,
because because of a broke the Chinese government to lead the corruption of
the rich, Guo Wengui. The domestic intelligence provider used whatsup to
provide him with information, so the government began to suppress
whatsup。[https://youtu.be/DWVxf2ARuOg](https://youtu.be/DWVxf2ARuOg)

------
sparky_
The most surprising thing to me is that WhatsApp was not already blocked in
China. I'd just assumed it would have been, given so many other Western
messaging apps are.

------
Arathorn
For what it's worth, the Matrix protocol (matrix.org) isn't blocked in China
at all to our knowledge, meaning folks get both decentralised & e2e encrypted
comms. Given the transport is just HTTPS and can hit any arbitrary server,
it's relatively hard to fingerprint and block in the manner that WhatsApp has
been.

------
Asdfbla
The article mentions that, as in years before, the Chinese tighten censorship
when important party meetings or other events of political significance come
up. But does anyone know if the longer term trend is toward more isolation of
the Chinese internet (or intranet, almost) or did the overall level of
censorship stay constant over the last few years?

------
WhitneyLand
It's interesting that for so long there was conventional wisdom suggesting a
large reason the Soviet Union economy failed due to inefficiencies of
communism and oppression.

We now know not only did that not stop China, it's not clear that the ceiling
of economic success of their system has been determined.

~~~
rubber_duck
China has a market economy - more government controlled and regulated than the
west - but it's not centrally planned economy like the Soviet Union. They
tried that in the past - google Great Leap Forward to see how it ended up.

------
intrasight
As long as China isn't breaking any WTO rules, they are free to block internet
services and apps. If other countries aren't happy with this, they should
change the WTO rules. If WTO rules are being broke, then clearly those rules
have no teeth.

Why would China block things? Various excellent reasons are discussed in this
thread, and they all boil down to political and commercial.

Are the Chinese people harmed? I would argue not. None of these "services" do
anything really important nor irreplaceable. Most are just new spins on
ancient tech like email and FTP, and the new versions that are blocked don't
really have any differentiating features compared to what is available
locally. The feature that is new is Digital Identity.

And so my final thought is that they are playing a long game with respect to
digital identity - which is the long game of most of these blocked services.
In Cyberspace, am I going to be Chinese or American? I aM not Chinese, but I
expect that most Chinese will want to also be Chinese in Cyberspace, and so
the Chinese government is fulfilling that desire.

~~~
nick32m
You do know that Wechat's chat history stored in Tencent's database in plain
text? The authorisation could check/monitor any Chinese citizen who uses
Wechat, if they say something bad about the government or spread the rumours
of some officials corruptions, they will be in big trouble?!? How do you mean
Chinese people are not harmed? Their privacy is absolutely harmed and they
have less choices for chatting and that's what the Chinese government wants -
they want everyone in China to use Wechat so they could absolutely
control/monitor

~~~
usaar333
Wechat claims they don't hold logs on disk:

[http://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/micromsg-
bin/oshelpcenter?opc...](http://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/micromsg-
bin/oshelpcenter?opcode=2&id=150915Ev6NF3150915fYRraQ&lang=en&plat=android&Channel=helpcenter)

------
pmarreck
Yeah, isolating yourself from the outside world will cause you to lose. See:
North Korea.

------
WillReplyfFood
I think in the long run we will see silo-driller middleware overcoming all
these obsticles as service.

You specify which of your We-Chat friends shall get your facebook updates and
the bridge middleware takes care.

------
antoniuschan99
This Tech Altar video is very relevant to the topic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs)

------
doglover7869
Anything that harms FB directly or indirectly is a good thing.

------
bigbugbag
Good move China. Now if the rest of the world could also block anything
facebook so the spying would be contained to the US it would be great.

------
geff82
Thou-Shall-Not-Do-Business-With-Dictatorships!

------
llamataboot
Aside from the speculation about why, does anyone have any speculation about
HOW this disruption is occurring?

------
TaylorGood
From a search and social standpoint, when I was in China, only Bing and Wechat
worked.

Instagram, etc. wouldn't refresh.

------
Bouncingsoul1
I'm currently on a buisness trip in china, had to switch to wire which is
still working.

------
EGreg
How does the blocking actually happen?

What if people used a decentralized service, that worked over https?

~~~
paralelogram
All traffic to/from some IP addresses is blocked, additionally all Chinese DNS
servers respond with random A records when the domain name is banned, for
example:

    
    
      $ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
      facebook.com            A       8.7.198.45
      $ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
      facebook.com            A       243.185.187.39
      $ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
      facebook.com            A       243.185.187.39
      $ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
      facebook.com            A       46.82.174.68
      $ host facebook.com 202.97.0.6
      facebook.com            A       59.24.3.173
    

(202.97.0.6 is an open resolver in China)

~~~
phonon
So you can get around the block if you use 8.8.8.8 for DNS?

~~~
ospider
No you can't, you will still get a connection reset error

------
FractalNerve
What are the downsides for 1) China and 2) chinese citizens from an objective
PoV?

------
artur_makly
why not.. when they already have this :
[https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160](https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160)

------
martin1975
coincidentally, I just bootstrapped my own Tor exit node in the USA...
Hopefully Chinese and everyone else whose freedom of speech is usurped can
still hook up to the Tor network.

------
kome
What about Telegram?

~~~
miaklesp
Was blocked two years ago

------
sidcool
The powerful will always get away with wrongdoings.

------
Keyframe
Is Viber working or is that on the kill list as well?

------
popcorncolonel
God, living in China sounds like absolute hell.

------
AmIFirstToThink
And Facebooks blocks free speech.

In the race to control what people say, think and see, between the governments
and the mega corporations, it's the people who are losing.

China blocks whatsapp... meh.

------
darkhorn
USA should block Chinase chat apps too.

------
bluetwo
This had not already been blocked?

------
dominotw
does this kind of thing violate any trade agreements between US and china?
should it?

~~~
logfromblammo
To my knowledge it does not, but it should.

Censorship is a weak attempt at mind control, which is a bit worse than
chattel slavery on the list of heinous things that humans do to one another.

Not only that, but in order to implement it effectively, you must be
omnipresent, with a finger in every ear and a hand over every mouth. The
concentration of power necessary to do that is an open invitation to
corruption.

If I had significant influence over US trade agreements, the degree to which
ordinary citizens had open and unfettered access to information would factor
into every last one of them.

------
known
China is like a GIANT Jail :)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
With really good food then.

------
lerax
Well done, China.

------
anthony_barker
Yawn... Wechat already dominates and is generally better.

Watching them try to ban bitcoin (another US invention) is more interesting.

------
sethbannon
Duplicate of this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332147)

~~~
hellofunk
If that other link (yours, I see) actually had discussion, this might be a
useful contribution to post here. But it doesn't.

Sorry mate, your submission didn't catch the fire of the kindling; no need to
repost it here.

------
0xbear
So brown nosing with comrade Jinping did not have a desired result. For those
not aware: Zuck asked him to name his first born. Jinping declined. :-)

~~~
CamperBob2
Interesting. Got a link that backs up this rather surreal claim?

~~~
aodin
> At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese
> president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his
> soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older
> relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a
> person briefed on the matter.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-
gover...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government-
regulations.html)

------
aaron-lebo
Well, at least Mark didn't sacrifice his child for that.

What's the end game here? In the early 2000s it seemed like China was going to
become this liberal democracy, but it just seems like the government is
getting more and more power and control. Is there any sign this (and the rise
of several authoritarians) is gonna stop?

This made me think of Fukuyama (1989):

 _What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the
passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as
such: that is, the end point of mankind 's ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man)

That looks really funny in hindsight. He's actually changed his position:

[http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama-
on-...](http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama-on-why-
liberal-democracy-is-in-trouble)

~~~
mikeash
I don't think there's any sign it will stop. The standard prediction used to
be that prosperity would bring democracy, but that's looking to be either
wishful thinking or bad extrapolation from past events.

~~~
azurezyq
Democracy and prosperity are orthogonal concepts. I agree both of them are
good but prosperity without democracy exist (China and in some sense
Singapore) and democracy without prosperity also exists (everywhere).

~~~
adventured
> prosperity without democracy exist

There has never been a large nation example of that in world history. China
has yet to get there in any broad sense. Further, there are exceptionally few
examples of it, regardless of nation size. A solid 80% to 90% of the
prosperous, well developed nations use representative government systems, and
not a single large nation that is prosperous at the median doesn't. Most of
the exceptions are smaller, resource nations like Qatar (even Saudi Arabia
hasn't achieved high-level prosperity at the median, their median income is
nearly 1/3 that of the US).

Here's the list of nations that are prosperous at the median -

Democratic: US, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Ireland, Japan, Italy,
Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden,
Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Israel, South Korea

Not Democratic: Singapore, Qatar, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE

Questionable inclusions: Czech, Portugal, Taiwan, Slovenia, Greece, Estonia,
Slovakia; vs Saudi Arabia on the other side

I don't see how this could be any more blatant.

~~~
zabana
Are you saying that before democracy appeared (300 or so years ago) humankind
didn't prosper economically, financially and culturally ?

~~~
jerf
In the modern sense of the term, they did not. 300 years ago, almost everyone
alive would be considered catastrophically poor by modern standards, and even
the elites would be considered to have some serious gaps in their wealth.

This is relevant because one of the perennial questions of history has been
"Why didn't high tech civilization arise centuries or millenia earlier?", and
governance issues like this are at least one of the defensible answers. Though
not the only one by any means.

------
justboxing
> By blocking the heavily encrypted WhatsApp service while making less secure
> applications like WeChat available to the public, the Chinese government has
> herded its internet users toward methods of communication that it can
> reliably monitor.

How could they possibly monitor millions of messages sent per hour? Even if
they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some protest, or
plot??

~~~
grzm
> _Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some
> protest, or plot??_

Do they need 100% accuracy for it to be effective? Nothing of this sort is,
and that's accepted as part of using it. Of course people work to minimize
false positives and false negatives, but it's understood that they can't be
reduced to 0.

