Google and China
Jan. 14th, 2010 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prusikGiven the relative fact vacuum, I don't know that anything else needs to be said. Also, I'm looking at this from a great remove of distance. However...
Whether Google made a political move or not, it can't avoid being seen as one. Witness all the blog posts congratulating Google on no longer censoring its search results. Likewise, it's a political statement that it's a sad state of affairs that we all refer to this censorship so openly, as if it were normal or expected. Also, it's amazing that no one has whipped out the phrase "interfering in China's internal affairs" yet.
However, it's not just politics. It's not merely politics. For whatever reason, the P-word gets hauled out to imply unimportance or irrelevance, as if the process by which we negotiate access to our rights (and how that process gets abused) has no effect on anyone's life. It's not a misunderstanding to see Google's action as political, as a rebuke of the Chinese government. It is, however, also incomplete. There's more to it than an empty rhetorical gesture. (For one thing, while Google had a surprisingly high percentage of the search market considering that it isn't a China-based company. It's no surprise that Google stock went down and Baidu stock went up.)
The Great Firewall of China obviously serves to maintain political control, but I bet it serves an economic function too. (This is pure speculation on my part, but if I'm right, then I'm sure someone has already made this point better.) We really have two internets. There is the Chinese internet and there is the internet for the rest of the world. In keeping out the rest of the world, China is fostering its own home grown versions of services the rest of the world takes for granted. (i.e., it's not just oppression, it's protectionism. China is in this weird place where it simultaneously claims to be as modern as any first world country while demanding all the advantages of its putative third world status.)
Now, for whatever reason, the most unreasonable person tends to be the one that wins any argument. It's not hard to imagine a future where we voluntarily abandon the internet for the rest for the world for the Chinese internet for economic reasons. e.g., it's the only way to get access to the huge Chinese market because we've implicitly accepted the Great Firewall as just the way it is. I don't think that will happen so long as the internet for the rest of the world is necessary. (e.g., if it's more innovative than the Chinese internet.) But I wouldn't be surprised if what happens is that rather than freeing China, we enslave the rest of us. (And we have our hook for a Futurismic story.)
This is why Google's move is both important and political. Whether they intended to or not, the message they send isn't merely some token against censorship in China. The message they're sending is, "We have some really awesome stuff, and you can't have it because you've locked yourself inside your internet."
Whether Google made a political move or not, it can't avoid being seen as one. Witness all the blog posts congratulating Google on no longer censoring its search results. Likewise, it's a political statement that it's a sad state of affairs that we all refer to this censorship so openly, as if it were normal or expected. Also, it's amazing that no one has whipped out the phrase "interfering in China's internal affairs" yet.
However, it's not just politics. It's not merely politics. For whatever reason, the P-word gets hauled out to imply unimportance or irrelevance, as if the process by which we negotiate access to our rights (and how that process gets abused) has no effect on anyone's life. It's not a misunderstanding to see Google's action as political, as a rebuke of the Chinese government. It is, however, also incomplete. There's more to it than an empty rhetorical gesture. (For one thing, while Google had a surprisingly high percentage of the search market considering that it isn't a China-based company. It's no surprise that Google stock went down and Baidu stock went up.)
The Great Firewall of China obviously serves to maintain political control, but I bet it serves an economic function too. (This is pure speculation on my part, but if I'm right, then I'm sure someone has already made this point better.) We really have two internets. There is the Chinese internet and there is the internet for the rest of the world. In keeping out the rest of the world, China is fostering its own home grown versions of services the rest of the world takes for granted. (i.e., it's not just oppression, it's protectionism. China is in this weird place where it simultaneously claims to be as modern as any first world country while demanding all the advantages of its putative third world status.)
Now, for whatever reason, the most unreasonable person tends to be the one that wins any argument. It's not hard to imagine a future where we voluntarily abandon the internet for the rest for the world for the Chinese internet for economic reasons. e.g., it's the only way to get access to the huge Chinese market because we've implicitly accepted the Great Firewall as just the way it is. I don't think that will happen so long as the internet for the rest of the world is necessary. (e.g., if it's more innovative than the Chinese internet.) But I wouldn't be surprised if what happens is that rather than freeing China, we enslave the rest of us. (And we have our hook for a Futurismic story.)
This is why Google's move is both important and political. Whether they intended to or not, the message they send isn't merely some token against censorship in China. The message they're sending is, "We have some really awesome stuff, and you can't have it because you've locked yourself inside your internet."
