
The Great Firewall, China’s New Cybersecurity Law - Parbeyjr
https://edgylabs.com/2016/11/11/the-great-firewall-china-cybersecurity/
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lunaru
I'm not a foreign policy politician and never plan to be, but I wonder if the
US has been engaging in conversations with China in the wrong way on this
subject.

My guess is that we've been approaching this from a moral standpoint (human
rights, freedom of speech, etc) but those arguments have never budged China. I
can't think of one issue where we've been able to convince them of policy from
a "rights" or "morals" perspective. In this regard, they'll go at their own
pace.

In the meantime, one of the US's strongest industries (software/internet)
stands to lose a ton of competitive ground with the rising middle class in
China consuming their own domestic version of the internet. It's already
created behemoths like Alibaba and Tencent with genuine innovation (e.g.
WeChat Payments). Perhaps if we removed the moral arguments and simply
attempted a trade agreement (even if somewhat compromised) we'd get some
ground on getting US internet businesses into China. That'll probably have a
greater effect on openness in the long run than sitting from an exiled
position lobbing moral arguments over the Great Firewall.

~~~
user5994461
> My guess is that we've been approaching this from a moral standpoint (human
> rights, freedom of speech, etc) but those arguments have never budged China

No offense but the USA is not in a position to give moral lessons ^^

It might be hard to imagine for an American but the rest of the world doesn't
give a damn about your country.

~~~
peferron
The world absolutely gives a damn about the USA, which is evident in how their
presidential election just made headlines in almost every country.

------
paradite
Yes, this is bad. It goes against human rights, freedom of speech,
globalisation and many of the principles of the free world.

We know this because it is what the media is telling us everyday 24/7\. And
there is no way that intelligent and decent Chinese people support this,
right?

Whoever that support such censorship which clearly violates the principles
that we hold so dear must be uneducated and uninformed deplorables, right?

Oh now I see that you are being sarcastic and I am offended, let me give you a
lesson on freedom of speech by downvoting you.

~~~
CodeMage
> _Yes, this is bad. It goes against human rights, freedom of speech,
> globalisation and many of the principles of the free world._

I find it very interesting that you're putting the globalization in the same
group as human rights and freedom of speech.

> _We know this because it is what the media is telling us everyday 24 /7._

No. We know it goes against freedom of speech by definition. We know it goes
against human rights, because suppressing freedom of speech is one of the main
ways to get away with violating human rights. We know being able to get away
with violating human rights is bad, because we don't want that to happen to
us. You don't need to blame media on what can be explained by reasoning and
empathy. Media has enough to be blamed for already.

> _And there is no way that intelligent and decent Chinese people support
> this, right?_

Of course there is. History is full of intelligent and decent people
supporting decisions that range from distasteful to downright horrific. Being
intelligent has little to do with this kind of decision. "Decent", on the
other hand, is hard to define and agree on. At best, it's a really low bar to
clear.

> _Whoever that support such censorship which clearly violates the principles
> that we hold so dear must be uneducated and uninformed deplorables, right?_

That would obviously follow if your previous statement were correct.

> _Oh now I see that you are being sarcastic and I am offended, let me give
> you a lesson on freedom of speech by downvoting you._

You seem to be under a false impression that freedom of speech means freedom
of consequences. Just like freedom of speech doesn't protect you from legal
consequences of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, it won't protect
you from the court of public opinion.

I consider any downvotes to your comment rightfully earned, because it
oversimplifies a very complex topic without adding anything to the discussion
of it. Worse, the tone of it leads me to believe that it is meant to actively
discourage discussion and disagreement.

~~~
paradite
> You seem to be under a false impression that freedom of speech means freedom
> of consequences. Just like freedom of speech doesn't protect you from legal
> consequences of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, it won't
> protect you from the court of public opinion.

You did a good job rebutting my comments until this part. Now I am not sure if
you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me because what you said here is
exactly the reality in China now and you seem to be okay with it.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Look, we all know this sucks. It's no surprise to us that governments the
world over are hell-bent on mass surveillance...

BUT, we shouldn't also disregard the historical and cultural contexts. China
has always maintained a very strict command of its people to preserve state
stability. Just ask the scholars from the Qin Dynasty. Oh that's right, you
can't, because their writings were burned while dissenters were buried alive
in mass graves.

You can rail all you want about totalitarianism and mass surveillance from the
comfort of a Hacker News thread, but let's be honest here: if a several-
thousand-year history is any guide, China will likely move in the direction of
more surveillance and control, not less.

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danieltillett
We operate a Chinese server in China for our Chinese customers, but the Great
Firewall make it almost impossible to maintain it from outside China. The
speed of any ssh connection is so low that any command that outputs more than
a few characters to the screen make the experience worse than dial-up via a
GSM modem. It will literally take me minutes to ls -l a directory.

~~~
paradite
Not directly applicable your case, but I will try my best to aid you by giving
you my experience.

I live in Singapore and I get very fast connections to some of the sites in
China, such as taobao.com and zhihu.com, which I assued employed some
additional mechanism to serve overseas users. In contrast, websites related
baidu generally loads slower (>500ms), which I assume is because they have no
need to serve overseas users. That's from a user's perspective.

I also have a VPS on DigitalOcean in Singapore region. It is accessible in
China and relatively fast when I tried to ssh into it within China (<100ms).

My suggestion would be to get a consultant firm or tech firm that specializes
in serving overseas users to get some insights on how to setup your
infrastructure. Surely there are ways to it, Valve managed to stream Dota 2
Shanghai Major to millions of people outside China. But you need to start by
really understanding how the Internet in China operates, not relying on prior
knowledge of setting things up in other countries.

~~~
ttflee
In Singapore it's most likely the distance that matters. Light travels fast,
yet the delays are significantly sensible in a global scale.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Not just distance. Some ISPs and hosting providers have direct peering with
PCCW.

Latency between a China residential connection and a host outside China cannot
be predicted knowing just the location of the host. It can vary by up to 5x
just depending on the peering/route.

------
lowpro
It seems people sometimes forget China is still an extremely authoritarian
state. 2 of my good friends moved here from China a few years ago, they never
want to go back, there's very little freedom.

I often wonder if laws like these will pressure people not directly affected
to do something about it. Then I remember how so much of history was caused by
people doing nothing, and I suspect that will continue to happen into the
future.

Long term, I don't see China giving up control of anything, only getting
tighter restrictions. I just hope this doesn't result in too big a war in the
future.

~~~
avh02
"2 of my good friends moved here"

'here' \- the internet is not one place. I'm going to assume US, but come on
dude.

~~~
mahyarm
not china is pretty obvious, you don't need much more.

------
signalP
It's always been fun to read comments below a China-related post, as a
Chinese. 1\. For me, our government is always trying to do some kind of lazy
policy. 2\. Try not to think of it in so-called Western way. China is a
developing country and new web users are less-educated compared to those from
the west(I have to say). That's why the web rumors are becoming a huge issue
in China and people are actually supporting this kind of law. 3\. Like almost
all the users on HN can't understand people voting on Trump. Don't judge it
right or wrong. Try understand their point of view.

------
hash-set
The free people of the world need to be working on helping China get out from
under censorship instead of letting our corporations abet this crime.

~~~
balabaster
You don't think censorship, propaganda and flooding out the truth with lies
happens in the West? Give your head a shake. Shit like this happens every time
you turn on CNN, Fox News, BBC News, Al Jazeera and any number of other "news"
outlets. You assume you're free and uncensored, but really you're just the
product of the propaganda and media bias you buy into and are part of the echo
chamber of that bias.

Sure, China is likely doing some despicable things. Abhorrent things. Don't
kid yourself that exactly the same shit isn't happening every day in the West.
We're all subject to it, we're all victims of it and we all propagate it.

Stop yourself and ask yourself this: How much of the shit I believe is
actually true? How much of it can I prove from first principles and how much
of it is just built on things I've learned through the media or the biases of
other people I trust? How much of what they believe is true? What can you
really trust?

Who is really free?

~~~
badsock
You're making a false equivalency between China and the West - it's a vast
exaggeration to say it's "exactly the same shit" that's happening. There is
absolutely propaganda in the West, and there is censorship, but by any
objective measure there is much, much more of it in China.

~~~
bogomipz
If it exists in both places at an institutional level is not false
equivalency.

The west has no shortage of propaganda. media complicity, censorship, and
legislation drafted up in the name of "national security." You yourself
admitted as much.

Please tell us by which objective measure are you referring to? You mention
"by any objective measure.", please enumerate what those "any" are.

~~~
badsock
Off the top of my head, the ability to run a web server without first getting
approval from the government is a pretty obvious differenciator.

~~~
bogomipz
So just that one criteria? Thats it?

I believe you are referring to an ICP license which would is more
regulatory/bureaucracy than anything else. You are also wrong, you can still
put a web server without an ICP license. You won't go to jail for not having
one nor does not having an ICP license mean you will automatically be censored
. However if you want to have a large online presence then yes you will need
to get an ICP license because hosting provider won't allow you to order rack
or cages without one. You should read this.

[https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/chinese-icp-
licensin...](https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/chinese-icp-licensing-
what-why-and-how-to-get-hosted-in-china--cms-23193)

source: I worked for a CDN that put servers in China.

~~~
badsock
From your link: "All sites hosted on a server in the Chinese mainland must, by
law, apply for and receive one of these babies [an ICP License] before their
site goes live, a rule enforced at the hosting level."

The West doesn't require websites to display their licence number in their
footers. They don't require printing presses to be registered with the
government. True there's widespread surveillance, but there's no official and
intrusive "great firewall": encrypted connections aren't throttled, there
isn't widespread use of proxies just to simply _access_ popular sites in other
countries. You can use whatever VPN you like in the West. Western movies are
routinely banned in China, whereas I can't find a single example of a Chinese
movie being banned in the Western world.

Are you seriously making the claim that censorship in the West is literally at
the same level as it in China? Because that's all I've said isn't true. I'm
not saying that the West doesn't censor or propagandize, I'm saying that it
(at least so far) hasn't engaged in to the same degree. I'm as angry at the
media and the government surveillance in the West as anyone, but hyperbole
does nothing to further the debate.

~~~
bogomipz
"Are you seriously making the claim that censorship in the West is literally
at the same level as it in China?"

No I never made that claim, what I said was that the OPs post was not a false
equivalence and that the west had no shortage of similar things done "in the
name of national security."

There was no hyperbole or any superlatives used in anything I wrote.

