

Google update on China - sahaj
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/update-on-china.html

======
alexdong
Many friends of mine have asked for my opinions on this. Figured now will be a
good time to vent it out. About myself: <http://alexdong.com/>. I grow up in
China, right now staying in Shanghai, waiting for my australia immigration
visa. I have to say that I feel really sad and powerless about this whole
event. I think China is gradually cutting itself from outside, like what we've
done in 1600.

Instead of writing a long post explaining what I'm having in mind, I found it
might be a good idea just to explain why most of the posts so far are
unfortunately quite wrong.

> @falsestprophet: The question of who rules China is pretty interesting. It
> turns out that the whole operation is run by a group of 9 scientists and
> engineers.

It's easy to think of China as a multi-core Hilter country but it's not. It's
true that the 9-people Politburo has the power to set the rules but they're
only the top of the iceberg. There are _HUGE_ amount of low level officials,
about 5% - 15% population, that actually rule the country using more morale
codes rather than laws. Legal process has long been considered scraped. The
last Politburo, with Jiang ZeMin as the president, has actually tried really
hard to open up China and setup direct dialogue. But the current one has been
cracking down on transparent governing since 2002. The next 'election' will be
on 2012, we'll see how that goes. I'm not holding any high expectation here
since 1) majority of Chinese population actually agrees with censorship. 2)
China has a long history of Xenocide. The boxer rebellion in 1900 was pretty
bad and the current communist party is actually silently encouraging that type
of nationalism emotions.

> @varjag: Google obeying their directive, if only formally, is a face-saving
> act for CPC. The redirect from the landing page can easily be censored,
> Google can have their Internet license, and the Party can pretend to
> domestic public that they have won. Everyone is happy.

I might be wrong but I don't believe Google will ever get their ICP license
issued. I'm not going to argue about this but let's assume that's what happen
at end of June, here are the implications I think are highly possible: *
<http://google.cn/> and <http://g.cn/> will be dead in the dust. * Chinese
will still be able to use <http://google.com/> * We'll see lots of `Connection
Reset` error whenever the page contains 'sensitive' contents. * I doubt the
chinese version of Google will be still accessible. For people like me, we'll
continue to use our `ssh -C -2 -D` channel or VPN to visit whatever websites
we'd like to use. For most Chinese people, they won't care.

> @jackowayed: How does that affect the Hacker-News-reading types who would
> want to hack together a website and start making money from it? How
> difficult/expensive/slow is it to get an ICP?

I used to run China's largest photo blogging site so I have some out-of-date
data to share here. There are actually two kinds of ICP licenses, one is for
sites with user generated content and the other without. It takes us 4500 RMB
and 3 months to get a license. We have to explicitly write down the IP
addresses and the hosting companies. Yes, shared hosting is a risk business
since your 'neighbor' might cause the physical machine be unplugged from the
internet, which I have witnessed with my own eyes once. Any further censorship
requests will go through the hosting companies instead of directly from the
government. For a million page view site, we'll usually get 1-3 phone requests
per week to take down contents. What? Did we actually take down as requested?
Of course I did! There was an accident that the whole data center was
"unplugged" because of some VIP customer was a bit late.

> @garply: I think much of the damage from Google pulling out has already been
> done - I know people who've switched back to Baidu because they find little
> things about Google HK frustrating (for example, Google.cn used to mimic
> Baidu in that you didn't need to control click to open a search result in a
> new tab - that was the default - Google HK behaves like Google US does).

Ok, I have to say that Google's operation in China was a failure even without
the censorship. They tried to copy the market leader by adding music search,
discussion forums. Can you imagine Google has a direct link to a forum on
their webpage here in China? Google used to be considered, 3-5 years ago, a
more accurate search engine with higher quality users. But several mis-
calculations on strategies essentially dig deep holes on the ship.

> @jrockway: Seems like they just want something to say to their investors
> when they have to leave China. If the government fucks them over, it's not
> Google's fault. If Google just leaves, then their shareholders might be
> upset.

I think western world is under-estimating the hoops they'll have to jump
through in China. Everyone thinks you have to have a presence in China because
the market is HUGE. But soon or later, they'll find either they lose control
over local sales or have to retreat to focus only on a few major cities. With
the changes in last 5 years, it's not only western international companies
that have suffered from this, but also many non-state-owned local companies.
At the beginning of 2010, state owned capitals have rushed into two
industries: coal mining and real estate, and ebb non-state ones out of the
game. The shareholders should thank google for pulling out since I don't think
the ROI is strong enough to keep Google in China.

> @greenlblue: Don't native corporations in China have an interest in keeping
> Google out? I suspect their license will not be renewed.

Mind you that the largest search engine Baidu.com is not a Chinese company at
all. But they managed to 'brand' themselves as a "national brand" and gain
supports from governments.

Alex

~~~
sethg
_It's easy to think of China as a multi-core Hilter country but it's not. It's
true that the 9-people Politburo has the power to set the rules but they're
only the top of the iceberg. There are HUGE amount of low level officials,
about 5% - 15% population, that actually rule the country using more morale
codes rather than laws._

...this is, after all, the country that _invented_ the large-scale
bureaucratic state.

------
alanh
In which Google attempts to comply with the letter, but certainly not the
spirit, of a directive from a communist dictatorship.

~~~
garply
China is only nominally communist and has no dictator. I think pseudo-
capitalist oligarchy is more accurate.

~~~
falsestprophet
The question of who rules China is pretty interesting. It turns out that the
whole operation is run by a group of 9 scientists and engineers.

They are called the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of
China [1].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China)

~~~
cma
Vaguely related Orwell essay:

<http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/james-burnham.htm>

------
jackowayed
Any commercial site operating in China needs an Internet Content Provider
license? How does that affect the Hacker-News-reading types who would want to
hack together a website and start making money from it? How
difficult/expensive/slow is it to get an ICP?

~~~
garply
Yes, but for little startups / projects like the kind you mentioned, you could
likely go through a middleman with good connections who could get you a
working ICP, which would probably technically be that of a shell company you
did not own but which was 'lending' you the ICP. Once you got bigger, you
would have the money to go through more official channels.

Going the super-official route would be a bit painful unless you already owned
a company because the minimal financing for a corporation is high here
(compared to the US).

More generally, the rule is - don't yammer about sensitive political issues
and try to follow the law and you'll probably be OK.

------
vorg
Can't read it here from within mainland China.

~~~
gkanai
Landing page url is: <http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html>

~~~
spazmaster
How can Google get away with this? The "Landing page" is basically just an
image that you can click on that redirects you to google.com.hk. So, in
effect, the only change made is that you must _click_ on the page to go to
google.com.hk instead of the automatic redirect. Big LOL. I do hope they get
away with this. Whoever thought of this audacious (and simplistic) move is a
genius.

~~~
kwyjibo
And you think this will work and be accepted...?

~~~
brown9-2
Perhaps they don't care that much to make large gestures to get their license
renewed. Seems like they've made the minimum gesture possible without
comprising their earlier stated principles on this.

------
Tichy
I have troubles understanding this. So the Hong Kong servers are not censored,
but they are also not blocked by the Chinese firewall? Or how does it all
work? If the Hong Kong servers are neither blocked nor censored, where is the
problem?

~~~
gommm
They could eventually be blocked if the chinese government decides to

~~~
Tichy
But while it isn't blocked, why doesn't the whole of China just surf through
Hong Kong?

------
greenlblue
Don't native corporations in China have an interest in keeping Google out? I
suspect their license will not be renewed.

~~~
eston
I wonder if Google has the proper Party connections to keep this mischief
going — I suspect with the shenanigans they're playing they either don't or
don't care about keeping them. There appear to be too many forces against them
for this to keep up for much longer.

------
garply
I don't think this changes much - Google isn't really going dark in China,
people will just have to type in google.com (which many of them probably
already do) or google.com.hk.

I think much of the damage from Google pulling out has already been done - I
know people who've switched back to Baidu because they find little things
about Google HK frustrating (for example, Google.cn used to mimic Baidu in
that you didn't need to control click to open a search result in a new tab -
that was the default - Google HK behaves like Google US does).

~~~
dchest
You mean this "在新的浏览器窗口中显示查询结果。" option
<http://www.google.com.hk/preferences?hl=zh-CN> ?

~~~
garply
Yup, but you and I are not casual computer users - some people are frustrated
by the change and decide it's easier to just use Baidu.

~~~
dchest
I remember they sometimes set "open results in a new window" option by default
for new users (those without Google's cookies). But not always, so it seems
like they're split testing it.

------
g__
What does the following mean, on
<http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html>?

我们已移至 google.com.hk

请收藏我们的新网址

~~~
est
we have moved to google.com.hk

please bookmark our new address.

~~~
Estragon
You're right, I was wrong.

------
jrockway
Seems like they just want something to say to their investors when they have
to leave China. If the government fucks them over, it's not Google's fault. If
Google just leaves, then their shareholders might be upset.

------
hop
Quite a different tune than Sergi's initial gung ho, human rights are being
violated by sensoring searches, and we aren't evil responce.

~~~
Estragon
Not necessarily. Other people in this thread have stated that google is
unlikely to see its license removed. If that's the case, there is some benefit
to going through the motions of compliance, to make the eventual denial seem
less reasonable.

------
apower
Why don't Google stick with its claim and just leave instead of dicking around
with letter of the law or spirit of the law? That sounds like a capitalist pig
instead of a moral crusader.

------
jacktang
I care will google return my google-ads payment

------
mey
So is this marketing PR speak for, we're not going to withdraw from China,
instead we're going to censor our search results, except in an even more broad
and drastic way?

~~~
Artifex
Doesn't seem to be. They're not censoring anything, as the redirect is still
available. This more playing semantics with Chinese Gov't Policy while still
making uncensored info available to those savvy enough to know to click a link
(which should be pretty much everyone).

EDIT: Ahahahahah! The landing page:
<http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html> is really just an image that
looks like a censored search. Every user would click it, and it then
redirects. Amazingly cheeky! Hopefully the technologically illiterate
bureaucrats there will see that it doesn't automatically redirect, and be
satisfied without digging deeper. Hahahahaha.

