
Taiwan to block Tencent and Baidu streaming sites on security risk - ilamont
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-to-block-Tencent-and-Baidu-streaming-sites-on-security-risk
======
dleslie
Tencent is making large moves into youth-targeting western media. They are
also the world's largest gaming company; League of Legends, PUBG, et cetera
are Tencent properties.

For instance, they own something like 40% of Epic Games, who is currently
throwing large envelopes of cash around to secure a strong position in video
game distribution.

If there is cause to be concerned about China applying soft power to sway
western opinions, then there is cause to be concerned about Tencent.

~~~
est
> concerned about China applying soft power to sway western opinions

China blocked Google/Twitter/Facebook with the the same logic.

~~~
chibg10
That's not really the full story though. The CCP was worried about the passive
soft power of an uncensored internet. The concern stated here is for soft
power resulting from the active influence campaigns and censorship originating
from the CCP.

~~~
sorryforthethro
Can Google/Facebook/Twitter be considered "uncensored internet"? To what
degree is a culture's view of moderate speech different than its influence of
"soft power"?

~~~
dleslie
It's not seperable. The spread of one's cultural values by way of dominating
media is a tried and true application of soft power.

~~~
ralusek
Or they could, you know, be a neutral search engine.

~~~
atomicUpdate
Then people would complain that they aren't taking down the Christchurch
shooting videos and are condoning hate.

~~~
dleslie
Authoritarian policies thrive alongside tragedy.

------
thoughtstheseus
I mean, PRC occasionally threatens Taiwan and says they own/control them.
Taiwan can/should protect itself in whatever way it sees fit(within reason).
If that’s tech/media influence then so be it- they think that it is an issue.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
It was super intersting being in Taiwan and talking to people about their
relationship with China. They do not feel they are Chinese subjects, but also
largely seem to accept the practical position they are in.

Loved Taiwan, hope they get real independence some day.

~~~
chrischen
I think you may have missed something when talking to them.

1) Taiwan is de-facto independent and PRC has 0 direct control over them.

2) The reason why Taiwanese passports say “Republic of China” is because they
are also claiming to be the _real_ Chinese government.

~~~
markjdb
1) The PRC exerts indirect control over Taiwan's economy by pressuring its
trading partners, so the distinction is academic.

2) That's a historic stance and not one claimed by most Taiwanese people
today. Meanwhile, PRC passports devote a page to each province of China,
including a page for Taiwan.

~~~
letstrynvm
The distinction is far from academic.

China itself is Taiwan's top trading partner

[https://www.trade.gov.tw/english/Pages/Detail.aspx?nodeID=94...](https://www.trade.gov.tw/english/Pages/Detail.aspx?nodeID=94&pid=651990&dl_DateRange=all&txt_SD=&txt_ED=&txt_Keyword=&Pageid=0)

Followed by the US. China does not need to "pressure its trading partners".

Taiwan has its own currency, does not pay tax to the mainland, has a real
democracy, and is an ally to the US.

Chinese passports can devote a page to whereever they want, it means nothing.

Interesting fact... phone numbers in the Taiwanese capital begin 02. That's
because when the KMT invaded, they reserved 01 for Nanjing, their base of
operations when they were the mainland government, and for whatever reason
they wanted to believe they would be able to retake it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Taiwan#Ar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Taiwan#Area_codes)

Does this mean Taiwan owns Nanjing? :-) Nor does the passport page act as a
deed of ownership for Taiwan...

~~~
markjdb
And Taiwan isn't even one of China's top ten trading partners. So who has more
power over the other?

The passport thing doesn't mean anything in and of itself. That's not the
point.

~~~
letstrynvm
You actually claimed:

>> The PRC exerts indirect control over Taiwan's economy by pressuring its
trading partners, so the distinction is academic.

That's not what happens. What does happen is China pressures international
bodies like the UN and the Olympic committee to pretend if they want to talk
to Taiwan, they must talk to only China.

But it has mainly cosmetic effect... eg, despite all that effort, Taiwanese
passports (not issued by China) are recognized almost everywhere except China

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_passport#Limitations_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_passport#Limitations_in_usage)

Of course the nuclear-armed mainland is bigger and scarier than a small island
of 20-something million with only conventional forces. But China has not been
suppressing Taiwan's trade as you wrongly said, it has been encouraging and
benefitting from it to the point it's the #1 partner with double the value of
the US.

------
forkLding
The issue is that the shows on iQiyi like Rap of China or Yanxi's Palace tend
to be huge hits not only in China but also in places like Vietnam, Yanxi
Palace was apparently the most Googled show in 2018
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Yanxi_Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Yanxi_Palace)).
So banning them in Taiwan would probably just lead to Taiwanese audiences
pirating the shows anyway.

Also these shows are actually broadcasted for free on the day that episode
comes out which attracts huge crowds and buzz (although lots of ads) and you
don't have to be a paying member or even a member to watch and they tend to be
popular even among non-paying members so there are probably more watchers than
the official 2 million daily active users.

Example of Yanxi Palace fame: [https://sg.style.yahoo.com/singapore-actor-
lawrence-wong-sen...](https://sg.style.yahoo.com/singapore-actor-lawrence-
wong-sending-hearts-aflutter-china-thanks-hit-period-drama-111832713.html)

I'm pretty sure this move will hurt the DPP more than help.

------
mrybczyn
Reddit is now suspect, after the major investment from PRC. I no longer visit
there...

I wonder if the 50 cent party
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)
is going to be involved in hacker news anytime soon...

------
Leary
Risk is an insidious notion. You can justify any action by citing a potential
risk. Ask yourself whether you would be okay with the United States blocking
these sites.

~~~
microcolonel
I would love that. Baidu's servers (which they list only for use as web
crawlers; and yes, on a number of address ranges with completely different
initial bytes, not just one network Baidu might have sold off to a consumer
ISP) regularly try to impersonate my email addresses, I know because I get the
DMARC reports. If U.S. mailservers didn't see Baidu's dishonest connections,
it would be less trouble to secure my email with mail hosts who are less
diligent to avoid spam.

When I try to send email to the administrators of these networks, it is
blackholed at the great firewall.

Furthermore, my personal website which _only displays my personal contact
information_ is blocked in China.

I can't do anything productive with Baidu, they are a net cost to me, while
surely to them I'm a nobody.

~~~
yorwba
> Baidu's servers (which they list only for use as web crawlers

Interesting, where does one go to check such a list of intended uses for a web
server? Since Baidu has a cloud offering, the likeliest explanation is that
the impersonation attempts are by spammers renting the servers from Baidu.

> Furthermore, my personal website which only displays my personal contact
> information is blocked in China.

Doesn't seem to be the case, unless I got the wrong website:
[https://en.greatfire.org/qui.suis.je](https://en.greatfire.org/qui.suis.je)

~~~
microcolonel
> _Doesn 't seem to be the case, unless I got the wrong website:
> [https://en.greatfire.org/qui.suis.je](https://en.greatfire.org/qui.suis.je)
> ._

That is interesting! I have some devices in Beijing and Shanghai, and I can't
reach qui.suis.je from there anymore (I used to be able to). I was able to
connect from Jiangsu for a week or so last month, but not since.

~~~
yorwba
The Great Firewall is known to do packet inspection, so if you ever had a
long-running SSH session with your server, they might have classified it as a
homegrown VPN tunnel and banned it for you specifically. Or they're letting
requests from greatfire.org through to make censorship harder to detect.

------
est
China blocks anything is called censorship.

Block something from China is for security risk.

In the end everyone just block everyone?

~~~
bilbo0s
> _In the end everyone just block everyone?..._

Would that be so terrible? Used to be a lot of time the answer was just war.
Well, now, if they can't get along on the playground, people just take their
marbles and go home.

It's not so terrible when you consider the alternative.

~~~
repsilat
I suppose you could argue something along the (slightly different) positions
that nuclear weapons reduce the likelihood of interstate conflict, and tasers
increase the use of police force -- i.e. when war was the only recourse, the
result was no recourse, and we were better off.

Not convincing though IMO, but the point is pretty academic at this point so
it's hard for me to say one way or another. Maybe we're all talking past each
other? It's one thing to say that _having_ recourse to block someone is good,
but quite another to say that _taking_ recourse to block someone is good.

------
chrischen
If you are blocking rather relying on a strong base of educated voters, then
are you any different from China, or have you essentially lost and have
adopted your enemy’s ideals?

~~~
ardy42
> If you are blocking rather relying on a strong base of educated voters, then
> are you any different from China, or have you essentially lost and have
> adopted your enemy’s ideals?

No. Strong bases of educated voters don't emerge fully-formed from the Earth
or something. It takes time to develop them and in that time they're
vulnerable.

~~~
chrischen
I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's true, but the path to develop is
littered with corruption, inefficiency, and general learn-from-mistakes
policies.

------
jorblumesea
Makes sense, China uses investments and media to alter perception of its
policies abroad. The US and other Western nations block Chinese investment
into infrastructure and tech, why not media as well?

------
abhinai
Every sovereign country has a right to block companies based on their security
risk assessment. In this case however, the given reasons sound a bit flaky.
Would have almost been better if they gave no reason at all.

~~~
letstrynvm
It's nice you are interested in this topic.

So why don't you look into it and make your opinion from the facts?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/18/chinas-
in...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/18/chinas-interference-
elections-succeeded-taiwan/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/taiwan-
electio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/taiwan-elections-
meddling.html)

------
vfulco2
decentralized will save the world from evil.

------
igi3ql
Taiwan blocking Chinese websites? Good.

China blocking Western websites? Bad.

~~~
ardy42
> Taiwan blocking Chinese websites? Good.

> China blocking Western websites? Bad.

That analysis is so oversimplified that all the important factors have been
left out of it.

------
teknologist
I feel that this is something many more countries across the world should do
considering that equivalent Western services are blocked in China.

