Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

This isn't totally bad. China has shown that it is possible to both offer an environment that fosters startups and online communities operating to their maximum creative potential while policing for things that incite hate, forms of bigotry, and ideas that create dangerous divisions. While China isn't perfect, I wouldn't mind if America was made less influential when it comes to the Internet.

By trying to make governments irrelevant, the big internet companies will end up in the bin of history. I would say that it is understandable that China or the EU are not happy to see how their tax revenue is siphoned out to the US (in the best scenario) or to fiscal paradises (in the worst case).

A supra-national level of organization is desirable, with open networks and a global community, but not the way we are doing it right now: currently a handful of companies are amassing all the power, benefitting a very small minority of workers (SV), collecting private information worldwide and providing that information to the US government. It is not even illegal, as Snowden thankfully revealed: US laws do not protect foreign nationals against eavesdropping.

What else can we, in the rest of the world, do? Since the behemoth is profitting from the global network but not contributing to its fairness, the only option left is to break it up, and take care of our piece of the network.

The other, better option, would be to regulate all this at the supra-national level. Sadly, we are entering a phase of nationalism, and that battle is already lost.

> This alternative would include technical standards requiring foreign companies to build versions of their products compliant with Chinese standards, and pressure to comply with government surveillance policies. It would require data to be stored on servers in-country and restrict transfer of data outside China without government permission. It would also permit government agencies and critical infrastructure systems to source only from local suppliers.

That is the trend in the EU and US as well. Cyber protectionism, more or less.

To be crystal clear: a nation's critical infrastructure that is produced or designed in places which are neutral or quasi-hostile to that nation is suspect. It's perfectly reasonable for China to want its critical infrastructure supply chain local.

It's also perfectly reasonable to mandate that products sold in China be compliant with Chinese standards.

The open question is what constitutes "transfer of data". And, to again be crystal clear: China is notorious for abuse of human rights and for being at the forefront of applied digital surveillance of its citizens. Which is a shame.

> we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free expression where open markets can flourish.

The internet has not been a place of genuinely free expression for something like a decade now; platform operators set boundaries. Note that open markets are disjunct from free expression.

> . At a roundtable in Dar es Salaam sponsored by Beijing, Edwin Ngonyani, Tanzania’s deputy minister for transport and communications, explained, “Our Chinese friends have managed to block such media in their country and replaced them with their homegrown sites that are safe, constructive, and popular.” Among other countries where China invests heavily, Nigeria has adopted measures requiring that consumer data be hosted in Nigeria, while Egypt has pending legislation that would mandate ride-sharing companies to store data in-country while also making it more accessible to authorities. Chinese partners like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt engage in aggressive online content control.

Notice that there are benefits here: citizens' data is being stored in a country where they have jurisdiction to sue over misuse. I consider that a Good Thing. But censorship, again, is problematic. The desire to be an individual entails being wanting to able to say and write what you desire, regardless of the government's censorship (and China does have people who want this- it is not special in this regard!)

> foundational principles of the internet in market-based democracies:

how disgusting a word choice! we're not liberal (free) democracies, we're market (to be bought and sold) democracies.

Markets are a prerequisite for liberal democracy.