I am the author of this blog post. I previously worked in IT before coming to China almost a year ago. Currently, I teach English and enjoy reading, researching, and writing with the free time this new profession affords me.
I've lurked HN for a while, but haven't given back in any way until today. My friend enjoyed this piece and encouraged me to share it to a wider audience, so here you are.
It sounds like you are hearing a lot of pro-Google sentiment, but here in Ningbo, all I get from people is anger. Curiously enough, the anger is not about Google or the censors, but it seems more about the West 'trying to push China around...' or 'trying to keep China down...'
So much so that I've learned to avoid even remotely political conversations with people here.
Maybe I should start hanging out with more English speakers, but then I wouldn't be able to learn as much of the language.
Same old story: a corrupt government invokes patriotic feelings to counter attacks against itself from abroad (or inside, associate the opposition with external forces and call them traitors). I'm so sick of this.
Yeah but to be honest it's H.Clinton's fault for providing them with ammunition.
What else did she think she was going to achieve by adding her weight to the argument? It was completely unnecessary and IMO a diplomacy fail.
It's the same with Ahmadinejad, most Iranians don't like him but they'll be "for" him if the Western world is being seen to deny them nuclear power.
I'm in Harbin, but location has little to do with it since this pertains more to cyberspace than meatspace. The pro-Google sentiment I refer to in the beginning was coming from mostly Western blogs and social news sites. For a Chinese netizen perspective, chinaSMACK translates comments from popular BBSes here (though I don't know about authenticity/bias - my Chinese isn't that good yet). Here's an example regarding the Google announcement: http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/google-threatens-leaving-c....
It's difficult for me to gauge the Chinese reaction on my own, though. A handful of translated comments or an online poll don't amount to anything, really. Doubly so once you're aware of the "50-cent gangsters" who are paid to astroturf online (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party and http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20091221_1.htm). The best resource I have are my adult students who spend the time online and can give me their impressions. So far, their responses have been to the tune of: "If Google leaves, what am I going to do!? I use GMail and many other services, and the search engine is better than Baidu for finding information in English. It's a critical part of my work!"
It should be noted that all of them (university-level and older) are aware of the censorship, they just have differing ideas on its necessity.
Do they feel like the West is unfairly criticizing China?
The Party loves playing the victim, probably because Western media affords them ample opportunity. What better way to unify the Chinese and distract them from a growing number of domestic problems than an enormous external enemy? But it's probably not always the direct work of the government - the Chinese are culturally cohesive, where the group is more important than the individual. Nationalism and its ilk pop up so often in the discussions here with students, it's frightening. (I used to live in Japan before coming here, and naturally it comes up when meeting new people. Actually having to try and reassure some people that modern Japan does not want to invade China and enslave them is unreal.)
Honestly, it's tough to say if such anti-Western reactions are genuine (thought out and justified) or just an internalized defensive mechanism.
Quote: This is exactly why Microsoft won't see a red cent from the Chinese for their software: why pay a premium for the legitimate version when the copy does the exact same thing for cheaper?
When I worked at Microsoft I got to listen to people working on relationship with China around software licensing (i.e not Bing). Accordibng to them the micro-software sells very well there. It was not a smooth sailing by any means and it took a lot of work, not unlike it took Bill Gates a lot of work to start selling software in the US when people were copying it for free instead in 1970s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists). The visit of Chinese president to Microsoft campus couple of years ago has symbolized the turning point.
Could you help me reconcile your point quoted above with the first-hand information I was presented? Thank you.
This quote was a generalization, but aimed at ordinary users. As mentioned in this article describing Microsoft's efforts in China (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/...), after years of failed attempts, MS was able to turn its image around from hostile to gentle software giant and convince the government to "go genuine." In order secure those buyers, MS drastically cut prices, but given the enormous number of Chinese government users, it's probably still netting a decent fortune.
As for those ordinary users who often trawl underground software/movie markets, they are the ones who will probably never be tempted to "go genuine." They aren't under pressure from the MS/PRC back-scrubbing to do so. It's likely that most people don't need to find a Windows CD if they've already purchased a computer with it pre-installed, but anything else is open game. The vast majority of these ordinary users are purely driven by cost, and if they're buying the cheapest pirated CDs (hey, even pirates have to compete), that money isn't making it's way back to Microsoft.
As an aside, the biggest reason why I would never buy from these markets in China is that some of the software is infected with trojans. "You get what you pay for," right? ;)
In other words Microsoft has sewn up the preinstalled PC market and the government market (the two biggest markets), and have left after-market to pirates (the smallest market).
Surely your Microsoft won't see a red cent from the Chinese was more than a little exaggeration?
> I've lurked HN for a while, but haven't given back in any way until today. My friend enjoyed this piece and encouraged me to share it to a wider audience, so here you are.
Off-topic, there, you were warned, but I've never understood lurking HN, reddit, digg, or any other karma-driven web community since all it takes is an upvote or downvote and suddenly you are no longer lurking. I mean why not create an account to simply save what you like? I think there is this sensitivity towards karma that affects HN more so than other communities, both good and bad, given it's intellectual user base and it's alliance to pg. IMO, karma is merely an indicator of user input and a value the rest of that community (the hive-mind) assigns for each input; my point being that as long as you're upvoting and downvoting anything you're still contributing, not lurking.
Speaking as another globalized ex-IT worker teaching English in China...
There were 2 points raised by Google...
(1) requiring google.cn results to be censored. This doesn't affect me, I just use google.com
(2) increased censorship over the past year, e.g. blocked sites, including blogger and all blogspot pages, all google groups subpages, and of course youtube.
This affects me!
Using proxies on blogspot doesn't help because the firewall detects the actual html content. Free vpn connect addresses are also very quickly blocked.
Google services seem to have been singled out here. Just seems like domestic industry protection.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to devalue the 'interestingness' of your post. So I suppose I owe you two putups ;)
1. I didn't know what Baidu was, let alone expect a search-engine to have so much more traffic than Google, although it doesn't surprise me given China's agenda.
2. I thought your 'bar scene' metaphor was very clever.
For the most part though, China's behavior does not surprise me, and although I have never been to China the current contract does a majority of it's business in China and even has an office there. Where one my duties was 'unblock their web-site from the internet' because their site was hosted here in the states and shared an IP with a naughty domain name. If China really thinks they can censor the internet, so be it, it's a pipe dream thanks to proxy servers that remain unblocked. China's effort is merely an inconvenience if a citizen is so inclined to getting the information they want on the web.
As far as Google goes, at least they tried and I salute them for at least making the effort, no matter how many features they removed and constraints they implemented at least they tried to show the people of China what they were about, and I am hoping they are not going to give up in that regard. If anything I think Google should wage an 'information war' on China in order to reverse the Governments efforts of censoring the web.
EDIT: just realized that you replied to a deleted post and not my own. :3
I had an interesting talk with my coworker (fellow engineer) from China. He had just been back there for a month, so I asked him what people thought about the whole Google thing.
At first he explained that he thought most people wouldn't care because they all use Baidu. But when I explained that Google was going to turn off censorship and filtering or leave, he seemed to get a little flustered. I think he couldn't imagine either possibility. He said he thought they would stay, but with less filtering than before.
I felt like the subject was getting touchy so we left it there. But I do find it plausible that Google's move will shock the average Internet user in China, especially if it shocks my relatively well-informed friend.
I don't agree with your assertion that China is this manipulative siren and the googles and microsofts of this world are naive innocent suitors.
For all the talk of corruption, censorship, and privacy, the Chinese government is surprisingly transparent at the macro level.
Gates and co knew going into China that the government will not budge regarding issues that even remotely threaten their political legitimacy. This point extends itself naturaully to the economic arena as well, as it forms the foundation of CCP's legitimacy for the past few decades.
So all the IP frou-frouing in your post seems off-the-mark to me, not to mention that blatant copying can be found in really any developing economy. Before the rise of China, recall that the centers of piracy were in HK, Taiwan, and Korea. Innovation is derivative and when you can't you copy until you can.
This is a natural phenomenon of economic growth.
Anyways thanks for trying to be at least more nuanced in your analysis, instead of casting blame only on one side.
Fresh perspective from inside the GFW. The picture painted reminds me of V for Vendetta. Censors monitoring everything. A government stretched thin to protect its hold over the people.
How could outsiders help from home?
Baidu's market share for search in China was about 77% in the third quarter, up from 75.6% in the second quarter. Google (GOOG), she says, lost share in China, dropping to 17% in the third quarter, from about 19% in the second quarter.
I always hate seeing this argument. Using back of the napkin calculations, that means Google is getting out of China because it's down to 50 million users there. I guess we should expect them to be leaving Canada soon, since they only have about 19 million users here. Not to mention that the number of internet users in China is growing by about 80 million people per year at the moment according to the world bank, of which Google was presumably getting their 17% as well.
Anybody can point to figures/estimations showing how much Google makes in China and in North America per capita ? I strongly believe that doing business in China is really not worth the associated trouble in Google's case (and in many others too).
Given the historical Western narratives on China (and all other Others), I think we can do a lot better than talking about China as a highly sexualized female seductress with ulterior motives.
Has it? The only evidence I've seen has been that image search screenshot for [tianamen square] with all the tanks. But that query was never censored in the first place, because it's a misspelling that only Westerners make. [tiananmen square] or the equivalent Chinese query is mostly pictures of the square itself.
This comment to me indicates that while the Chinese people do obviously suffer, maybe like the poster above they have become so desensitized over the years, inside the great wall/firewall, that they don't even realize what they are losing/missing or have already lost.
The less you know the well you sleep. Majority of people disregard the natinality prefer to sleep and eat well rather than to bother about missed possibilities and opportunities.
I am the author of this blog post. I previously worked in IT before coming to China almost a year ago. Currently, I teach English and enjoy reading, researching, and writing with the free time this new profession affords me.
I've lurked HN for a while, but haven't given back in any way until today. My friend enjoyed this piece and encouraged me to share it to a wider audience, so here you are.