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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#121

Post by alexasmyths »

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…

"their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth"

Partly.

The exception is that the Chinese are pretty good at this stuff, and that 'blocking foreign companies' simply let's local companies dominate.

'SnapChat' and 'What's App' are no innovation. For the most part.

They are mostly just 'chat apps'. That's it.

Ok, Snapchat does a 'really good job' at the 'visual storytelling part'. But China does not need that cutting-edge level of social interaction for a few years until someone copies it well.

They'll do fine.

China is actually big enough - and their techies are talented/aggressive enough - that they can get away with a lot of these shenanigans.

You obviously have a good point though.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#122

Post by jerf »

zabana wrote: post #105
adventured wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prosperity without democracy exist There has never been a large nation example of that in world history. China has yet to get there in any broad sense. Further, there are exceptionally few examples of it, regardless of nation size. A solid 80% to 90% of the prosperous, well developed nations use representative government systems, and not a single large nation that is prosperous at the median doesn't. Most of the ex…

Are you saying that before democracy appeared (300 or so years ago) humankind didn't prosper economically, financially and culturally ?

In the modern sense of the term, they did not. 300 years ago, almost everyone alive would be considered catastrophically poor by modern standards, and even the elites would be considered to have some serious gaps in their wealth.

This is relevant because one of the perennial questions of history has been "Why didn't high tech civilization arise centuries or millenia earlier?", and governance issues like this are at least one of the defensible answers. Though not the only one by any means.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#123

Post by Animats »

Naomi Wu's comment on China's surveillance: "That's basically the social contract. Someone grabs your purse, you go to the police station, they show you the video, usually catch them. ... Honestly, I hear more anger on Weibo/Wechat when there's not camera footage of a crime than any unhappiness over cameras on the street etc."[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#124

Post by flexie »

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 local rivals if left to it, and are proven to provide a convenient surveillance platform for American intelligence.

It's surprising that any country would allow that to continue unchecked. The Chinese solution is certainly not great but I doubt the US would allow Chinese companies to keep a daily log on the activities of most US citizens and businesses. Or to replace entire industries like advertising without providing jobs or taxes in return.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#125

Post by stevenwoo »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #3

Well, at least Mark didn't sacrifice his child for that. What's the end game here? In the early 2000s it seemed like China was going to become this liberal democracy, but it just seems like the government is getting more and more power and control. Is there any sign this (and the rise of several authoritarians) is gonna stop? This made me think of Fukuyama (1989): What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the…

Small sample size, but I had a close friend in the 90's who came from China, got her masters and phd here, and still parrotted the Communist party line when talking about the Tibet or the Tianamen square massacre or Taiwan - in their view the US is worse in a lot of ways with native Americans, prisons and treatment of minorities. She and all of her peers (graduate degrees earned in the USA) also survived the Cultural Revolution and in spite of that none of them supported liberal democracy for China.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#126

Post by pangfandang »

micaksica wrote: post #76
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…

> The people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. So in other words, the ruling class continues to rule, as they will be the only ones with the sanctioned political freedoms to study abroad, etc. > China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert China being the world's giant…

China is still very poor. The Chinese rural households have a per capita income of only 9,892 yuan – about $4 dollars a day. and there's 680 million of these rural households still.

Chinese urban households have only a per capita income of 29,831 yuan – an abysmal $4,500 a year.

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/china-is-still-really-poor/

And we see the effects of poverty on education: "Surveys by Rozelle's team have found that more than half of eighth graders in poor rural areas in China have IQs below 90, leaving them struggling to keep up with the fast-paced official curriculum"

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/one-three-chinese-chi...

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#127

Post by justboxing »

> By blocking the heavily encrypted WhatsApp service while making less secure applications like WeChat available to the public, the Chinese government has herded its internet users toward methods of communication that it can reliably monitor.

How could they possibly monitor millions of messages sent per hour? Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some protest, or plot??

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#128

Post by chaostheory »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #99
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…

Completely agree that they will further cement their power, but it won't be at the cost of innovation and growth IMO. China's access to leading technologies and technologists is absolutely unparalleled. The amount of Chinese students that are publishing some of the leading CS and ML research from the best universities and corporations worldwide is staggering when compared to all other nations. China isn't 'Closing up…

> The amount of Chinese students that are publishing some of the leading CS and ML research from the best universities and corporations worldwide

Yes most of them are in the West. Most of them also end up staying in the West too.

> Unless the US, Canada, France, Israel etc... closes the visa program for Chinese workers Chinese companies... Consider that Tencent, Baidu etc... all have major offices in SV, Seattle, LA etc.

Having a physical satellite office where only a few select people have access to free flowing data is a lot more expensive and inefficient compared to being able to just freely communicate online. It's a bottleneck.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#129

Post by jzl »

eyeareque wrote: post #101
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 used to think this way too until I went to china. The current batch of US apps are also copies of earlier apps. Remember chatting on bbses? IRC, ICQ, etc? China doesn’t need western internet companies, they have a quarter of the world’s population. Can you blame them for wanting to promote home grown apps to build wealth within their country? Also, they like control, why would you let an foreigner end to end encryp…

I’m surprised iMessage worked for me while I was there. I wonder what consessions Apple had to give for that?

From the article:

'Other services provided by American technology companies are available in mainland China. The country tolerates Microsoft’s Skype service for phone calls, which does not provide end-to-end encryption and as a result is easier for governments to monitor. Beijing also allows Apple’s FaceTime service, which has end-to-end encryption but does not have a WhatsApp-like feature allowing users to exchange secret codes — letting WhatsApp users combat what are known as “man in the middle” attacks.'

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#130

Post by bryananderson »

This event is an amazing lesson in what China's rulers see as their interests and how they pursue those interests.

Over the last several decades, these rulers have done a lot to open China to the world and lift the totalitarian restrictions of Maoism.

This process has been the greatest poverty reduction program of all time, and thus it would be easy to mistake it for altruism, or at least a belief in governing in the common interest.

This theory, however, fails to explain much of the Chinese leadership's behavior, and I submit that self-interest is a superior theory.

The wealthier and stronger China becomes, the wealthier and stronger its rulers become. Thus it is generally in the rulers' interest to make China wealthier and stronger.

But if something would make China wealthier and stronger, but could loosen the ruling clique's grip on that wealth and strength, then it is against the rulers' interest and they will act to prevent it.

This is why China often acts as though it values technological leadership, but continually takes measures such as these, which undermine that leadership.

The result, as several in this thread have pointed out, is that China will not soon be the world's leader in cutting-edge technology.

But China will still be rich. And China will still be strong. And China's rulers will still be in power.

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