
Censorship or Protectionism? Reassessing China’s Regulation of Internet Industry [pdf] - lainon
http://www.ijssh.org/vol7/790-MC26.pdf
======
simonh
>...it is foreseeable that the protectionism by Internet censorship will be
abolished after Baidu, Youku, Sina Weibo, and Renren mature enough.

No, it really isn't. This was an interesting read right up to this part of the
conclusion, then they blew it.

Yes of course China's strict censorship of foreign services creates an
opportunity fir domestic rival services, but the censorship came first and
takes primacy over commercial considerations both for internal services and
external ones. The Chinese government sees pervasive control of society as a
primary political objective and their grip on the domestic internet gives them
that. Every firm of internet communication is scanned, filtered and traced.
All the major message broadcast services, equivalents of e.g. Twitter and
Facebook, are astroturfed with pro-government propaganda. This is not going to
stop just so that a few Chinese internet companies might possibly have a
Chance of making a bit of money overseas. To think that's possible is
astoundingly naive.

Anyway, why would they have to? They could just partition their foreign
services to not include domestic filters.

~~~
dilemma
>All the major message broadcast services, equivalents of e.g. Twitter and
Facebook, are astroturfed with pro-government propaganda.

This is a conspiracy theory. Prove it.

>They could just partition their foreign services to not include domestic
filters.

Already done with WeChat.

~~~
IIAOPSW
Its common knowledge. Even has a wikipedia page.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

------
ordu
To my mind, we are not stick to one of two options "censorship or
protectionism", they are not mutually exclusive. From epistemological point of
view it is better to choose one, but I believe that this is not the case with
China Internet regulation. China govenment is not so stupid to miss any of
opportunities that banishment of foriegn services brings. Moreover China
government is clever enough to make it hard to deduce his motives from his
behaviour. Censorship and protectionism are both not very good and can be
target of international blame, but it is hard to write some brilliant piece of
critics of China government methods, while considering two possibilities.
Unclear goals gives China some space to defend himself from critics.

------
api
It's always been completely obvious to me that the firewall is about
protectionism. It doesn't do much to actually censor anything but it
definitely allows exclusion of foreign Internet services and creates a pretext
for denying their ability to do business in China.

It's a way for China to comply with the letter of trade agreements while still
refusing to open their markets. Getting a bit tougher with China on trade is
one of the few things I actually agreed with Trump about and the main thing I
disliked about Clinton.

