Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 648 posts

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#491

Post by usaar333 »

averagewall wrote: post #449
elefanten wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim gets made a lot, especially by China's government in it's "four great modern inventions" marketing campaign. [1] I don't get it. None of those are Chinese inventions. They're all technologies China adopted really fast. It's a testament to market size, development speed and certain idiosyncrasies about Chinese demographics, etc. But it has nothing to do with invention or innovation. [1] http://www.chinadail…

What's worth more, inventing something or commercializing it? It sounds a bit like USA vs Israel. Israel invents a lot while the US commercializes on a bigger scale. If the US isn't very good at developing new products because of burdensome regulations, small market size, slowness, demographics, etc. then maybe it's just not very good at technology. Other countries are bad at technology because of poor education, acc…

I think the point though is that it's only fair to compare companies when they compete head to head in similar markets.

It isn't that interesting to say China has a huge mobile payments market dominated by Chinese companies when that is almost entirely due to a lack of an existing CC infrastructure.

It is interesting when Chinese network companies (Huawei, TP-link, etc.) are able to out-compete US based companies in their home market.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#492

Post by doktrin »

flexie wrote: post #124
chaostheory wrote: post #40

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 the…

I think censorship is only part of the reason. Protectionism and national security probably plays a role aswell. Look at the list of websites they block: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland... Google, facebook, instagram, twitter etc. Those are one-way streets that provide next to no jobs, little tech transfer and no tax revenue to the countries they do business in, but tend to outcompete the…

Frankly I agree, and would not shed a year if Google and FB were banned in other regions, allowing local competitors to develop. I don't buy this idea that the silicon valley hegemony is an unequivocally good thing.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#493

Post by chaostheory »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #479
chaostheory wrote: post #40

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 the…

That is totally wrong. If you think that China lacks innovation then you clearly have never been there. China is one of the most dynamic capitalistic countries in the world and there is no shortage of innovation. Even if then they have 1/3rd the innovators as the US, they still have 40% more innovators than the U.S. Innovation will just happen within the context of Chinese political constraints. The real threat is no…

ok, I understand that this is an emotional subject (I can relate), so please re-read the comment that you're responding to.

1. It didn't say China lacks innovation.

2. It is not critical of China as a whole. It is critical of the ones making stupid, selfish laws in China out of fear, which imo will hurt growing innovation in China.

3. If there's no shortage of Chinese innovation, why is there so much fear of 'inferior' outside competition?

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#494

Post by kbart »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #490
kbart wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has had an unrestricted Internet access until recently. I still don't see booming tech sector (or actually, any) there or people revolting against authoritarian government. There's language and cultural barrier that must be taken into account -- free access to information won't do much if people still prefer their information and social bubbles and actively maintain them. Russians also have copy-cat versions o…

What about Yandex and vk?

That's what I meant by writing: "Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones". vk == Facebook, Yandex == Google.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#495

Post by natural219 »

jacquesm wrote: post #295
diminish wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chinese start an economic and cultural expansion which includes PRing their culture, movies, tech, products and building special relationships with developing world in Asia, Africa, south American and Europe they may end up being the globalization leader.

That is going to be tough. A whole generation of Chinese see the west as cool and to be emulated. I have a hard time seeing a whole generation of Europeans and Americans wanting to emulate the Chinese, Japan, maybe. China, not so much.

Speaking as a young Western person, you are severely out of touch on this point.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#496

Post by usaar333 »

nick32m wrote: post #406
intrasight wrote: post #399

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 woul…

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'…

Wechat claims they don't hold logs on disk:

http://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/micromsg-bin/oshelpcenter?opc...

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#497

Post by xbmcuser »

chaostheory wrote: post #40

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 the…

This is just a temporary ban saudia just allowed use of whatsapp calling as they were given access and allowed to monitor. China will also allow once it gets access.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#499

Post by knowThySelfx »

Nomentatus wrote: post #338
adventured wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India with its 1.3 billion people is capable of operating via a Democratic system (with its various issues and flaws not detracting from that fact), and they're even poorer than China and with fewer resources. There's no reason China can't manage a successful (even if messy) transition away from authoritarianism to a variation of representative government.

Corruption is worse in India than China, and that's problem one. Not coincidentally, growth in India has generally been slower (until recently) and just dropped. And India may be devolving into a theocracy. Not the most attractive example.

Not sure that's an informative answer. Can't always trust what the MSM says. Not sure from where you got such a notion.
Post reply on HN