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China Blocks WhatsApp

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#341

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

jimmies wrote: post #157
ben_jones wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5 points according to the video: 1) Married Priscilla Chan 2) Learned Mandarin 3) Joined Tsinghua University 4) Befriended Xijinping 5) Offered to let Xijinping name firstborn Personally I have trouble believing 1 and 5 were to get Facebook products into China unabridged. 5 sounds like a joke at a dinner party.

#5 is really low. I cannot believe someone who did that is a great person. This guy's baby is just another tool huh?

Apparently he asked him for a Chinese name for the child, so it's more of an honorary thing than anything. The child would have a non-Chinese 'regular' name (Max in this case), and the traditional Chinese name could be sourced from him.

People phrasing it in a scandalous-sounding 'omg he asked him to name his firstborn' way are reading into it too much.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#342

Post by dreamfactored »

micaksica wrote: post #205
bad_user wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China might build their own products and I can see them building WhatsApp alternatives, but I won't install Chinese alternatives to WhatsApp on my phone, which means the Chinese won't be able to talk with me, an European, all the while I'm communicating without issues with acquaintances from all over Europe and the U.S. This means that the Chinese are living in a bubble. This isn't news of course. But the other issue…

> their middle class are now sending their children to western schools and many of them will probably go back to China I disagree with the "middle class" being the ones sending their children internationally. The Gini coefficient in China is higher than that of the United States. Even if it was the same income distribution, America's middle class cannot afford to send their children to private schooling in other coun…

Easy way to measure the middle class with your own eyes - count the number of Uniqlo stores (or Starbucks type places) and watch how fast the products are moving in them. In major Chinese cities that has rapidly accelerated over the last few years and they are now on a par with (or even ahead of) any major Western city.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#343

Post by Joking_Phantom »

the_common_man wrote: post #326
Joking_Phantom wrote: post #89

WeChat is the replacement for WhatsApp, fully compliant with Chinese censorship controls. What's mildly disturbing is that many Chinese Americans, both American citizens and not, living in the US use WeChat. They use it because of their cultural and social ties with China. Chinese tourists as well have had increasingly better integration inside the US as well, which would only serve to spread the usage of WeChat to a…

Well, it's all perspective. What's greatly disturbing is that people in US giving all their data to corporations to mine and monetize... Everyone using gmail and this ends up with _my_ data (as a non-gmail user) being mined. US startups have also turned pretty much every website into a wormhole for tracking users/visitors. Atleast, in china, there is none of this advertising BS.

I won't dispute this - the private sector is composed of people just as the government is, and their attachment of sensitive data to vulnerable identifying information is just as abhorrent and many times more dangerous than anything the federal government could ever do.

In my mind, the novel problem here is that the Chinese government can use such information in order to socially police people that nominally aren't under their control. Google in Europe or America has no desire other than to collect info for commercial purposes, and there is no inherent desire to turn over private information to any government.

WeChat in America constitutes a potential extension of Chinese governmental control onto American citizens. This can be something as innocuous and reasonable as the denial of visas due to certain communications, or something worse. American citizens may get their Chinese friends and relatives in trouble for something they say. A few cases of these, and suddenly half the American WeChat user base knows they have to watch what they say unless they don't care about people they know. Moving out of the platform is not an option due to network effects.

China has long maintained that foreign tech services offer an opportunity for foreign countries to subvert their information controls, and has banned thousands of domains and companies under the guise of protection from foreign influence, commercial or gubernatorial. What's to say that China won't turn around and do the same thing to other countries?

To your point about no advertising BS in China, well you'd be right if it were 20 years ago. Unfortunately, advertising has become a booming industry in China. Take a walk in most significant Chinese cities, and you'll find the constant bombardment of information to be more garish than any American counterpart. The Chinese Internet is no different.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#344

Post by ebola1717 »

chaostheory wrote: post #331
dreamfactored wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. These are foreign-owned infrastructure platforms and China is protective about its markets. Foreigners can't set up businesses of any kind, let alone infrastructure. 2. You seem to assume the bulk of innovation is going to be happening outside China and that blocking consumer access to Western platforms would somehow inhibit a flow of information to China. I'd disagree on both counts. The Chinese government is act…

1. My question was rhetorical. It was in response to someone saying that apps outside of China are unimportant and small. 2. No single country has a monopoly on innovation. Consequently the sharing of ideas from different locations and cultures is really important for moving forward. You miss out on this benefit when you consciously work to block it. Historically, the last time China was this arrogant about isolation…

China's not blocking out the sharing of ideas though. Until a few months ago, Andrew Ng worked at Baidu!

They are isolating data, but hoarding data is a competitive advantage in a way that isolating knowledge isn't.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#345

Post by gerbilly »

nv-vn wrote: post #177
gerbilly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you didn't intend your comment this way, but I see it as a bit patronizing to assume that just because China hasn't produced a Rousseau or a Hobbes domestically[1], that they couldn't possibly take new ideas from them. Asia is about a lot more than social harmony and the mandate of heaven. There is an incredible diversity of opinion on almost any subject there, just as in the West. [1] Citation needed.

Yes, but what is being said is that Rousseau and Hobbes and Locke are ingrained in Western culture in much the same way that Confucianism is ingrained in Chinese culture. Lapses in the absolute power of Western monarchy opened up a space for an Enlightenment and gave rise to those new ideals, not to mention the prior blows that this style of governance had suffered in the West -- the Magna Carta, more frequent war, r…

In that framework how do you explain the cultural revolution, and the inversion of power that resulted from that?

Younger red guards denouncing their elders, the attempt to get rid of the four 'olds' doesn't seem like a particularly conservative or Confucian agenda to me.

If it were impossible for this kind of thought to take root in China, I doubt that this movement could have gotten off the ground.

The right time to judge whether the Chinese people really value social harmony more than the west does is when economic growth stalls or even reverses for a decade or so.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#347

Post by taobility »

FabHK wrote: post #166
mattmurdog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have an alternative it's called WeChat. Maybe other people should install that instead?

It's way more powerful than WhatsApp, too (location based chats, payments, etc.). And, of course, it's not E2E encrypted; just the opposite, you can assume that it's being wiretapped/monitored. Thus, please don't install it.

I just wondering, for normal people, what kind of information you concerned to not be monitored, seriously? I knew most western take the privacy higher than anything. But for most normal people living outside of US, they really don't care. You would say they are dumb, but they care more about food, entertainment than the privacy, and liberal. To be honesty, nobody in China cared WhatsApp be blocked or not. As maybe 99.9999% Chinese even don't know there is an App called WhatsApp.

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#348

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…

side note:

People decry Trump for his words on 'starting a trade war' with China.

I am no fan of Trump or Bannon - but on this they are right: we are already in a trade war.

Blocking companies from participating arbitrarily, making it 'very difficult' for others, currency manipulation, capital controls, outright theft of IP.

This, in any other situation is a trade war.

Imagine the EU just says 'no Google in Europe'. That's crazy. It's a trade war.

Because back in the 1980's, the world basically let China do as they please because they were 'rebuilding' (think Japan or Korea after their wars) - we sort of got used to it.

But if China is going to play this game (hey, it's their right), then there should be a response of some kind.

Responding to 'trade intransigence' is not a 'trade war' - it's just tit for tat.

Won't happen though - as big USA corps are so greedy to want a big massive slice of the magic unicorn dangled in front of the by the Chinese gov, they shut up and 'kow-tow' :). It's changing maybe a little bit though, what I'm saying is not new, it's just not spoken that much publicly.

For some interesting insight see Charlie Rose w/Richard McGregor:

https://charlierose.com/videos/30937

Re: China Blocks WhatsApp

#349

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

gaius wrote: post #250
Certhas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative: Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster. Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but s…

China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.

Seems like you can either...

A) Reach a predetermined level of technology you are comfortable with |OR| B) Look spacewards.

Very hard to do both of those.

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