
China’s Internet Controls Will Get Stricter, to Dismay of Foreign Business - danielmorozoff
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/international/china-cyber-security-regulations.html?ref=technology
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The Chinese government actually has very little incentive to allow foreign
internet companies inside China. By restricting outside companies they do the
following

1\. Reduce the ability of outsiders to influence their people

2\. Avoid Arab Spring like events where because the companies are foreign, the
coordinating network is opaque to the government

3\. Allow the domestic internet companies a chance to grow and develop without
competition from established foreign companies

4\. Retain and develop talent and technology (ie big data, machine learning)
domestically

Because China has such a large population, they can easily develop and sustain
their own internal internet industry without needing Western/American
companies.

I think the Snowden leaks showed that the Internet has been weaponized by the
United States and having American companies controlling large services like
Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter gives the US government a massive trove of
intelligence. It also enables them to influence citizens of other countries. I
think a lot of countries in the near future will see the Internet as essential
to their national security and thus try to limit foreign influence as much as
they can with varying degrees of success

~~~
sho
Your comment has been downvoted, probably because of the hyperbolic "the
Internet has been weaponized", but you bring up a good point. I've long
thought it absolutely insane that governments all over the world blithely
allow Facebook, and by extension the USG[1], to collect a comprehensive social
graph of their entire citizenry. Who's friends with who, who talks to who, how
often and about what, who works where, who goes where and when. This level of
information about another country's citizens sounds like the wildest dream of
an intelligence agency. It literally sounds like the onion:
[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-
dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-
cut-agencys-cos-19753)

Why did these other governments let FB & friends in? I think they just didn't
see it coming, and by the time they realised the cat was out of the bag. Well,
China saw it coming, and closed the door before it was too late. I'm not
surprised China is doing that - I'm surprised other countries don't do it.

[1] Does anyone seriously believe that at least parts of the USG do not have
access to facebook's data?

~~~
wavefunction
One of the first investors in facebook was In-Q-Tel.

I think most people who care about things like that already knew a long time
ago.

~~~
late2part
This is false. Please provide supporting information for your assertion that
In-Q-Tel invested in The Facebook.

~~~
CamperBob2
The OP may be confusing Facebook with Google. Apparently there's some evidence
of Google's ties with the US intelligence community:

[https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-
venture...](https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture-
capital-firm-preview/)

    
    
        Two of the names that come up most often in 
        connection  with In-Q-Tel, however, need no 
        introduction: Google and Facebook.
    
        The publicly available record on the Facebook/In-Q-Tel 
        connection is tenuous. Facebook received $12.7 million 
        in venture capital from Accel, whose manager, James 
        Breyer, now sits on their board. He was formerly the 
        chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, 
        whose board included Gilman Louie, then the CEO of 
        In-Q-Tel. The connection is indirect, but the 
        suggestion of CIA involvement with Facebook, however 
        tangential, is disturbing in the light of Facebook’s 
        history of violating the privacy of its users.
    
        Google’s connection to In-Q-Tel is more 
        straightforward, if officially denied. In 2006, 
        ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele told Homeland 
        Security Today that Google “has been taking money 
        and direction for elements of the US Intelligence 
        Community, including the Office of Research and 
        Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, 
        In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the 
        National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s 
        Intelligence and Security Command.” Later that year, a 
        blogger claimed that an official Google spokesman had 
        denied the claims, but no official press statement was 
        released.

------
bobjordan
One does not simply launch a website on a server inside of China. First, I had
to wait about four months on a waitlist with AWS-China to get setup with an
AWS-China account for our China business. Now, I've had the AWS-China account
for about 3 months and still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can
actually open port 80 on a VM. No less, the time it took to get fully
functioning companies in place to even be able to have a business account. It
is a crazy struggle over here, but I guess if it was easy, everybody would be
doing it.

Edit: forgot to mention that the solution also depends on my Chinese wife
having her name on the ICP linense documents. It wouldn't even get done
without that.

~~~
rsync
"still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80
on a VM."

It is my understanding that things are much, much easier if you are not
"publishing". That is, if you don't have a website or open port 80 (for
instance) you can quickly and easily co-locate devices inside China - without
any kind of license.

Although we have not yet deployed rsync.net in mainland china (we have a
location in Hong Kong) all of our contacts and partners were happy to rent us
rackspace for non-publishing infrastructure - no licenses needed.

------
Jerry2
I never understood why Western technology companies haven't taken China to a
WTO tribunal for restricting their business practices. I mean, China exports
trillions of dollars worth of goods to us yet when you try to export services
to China, you're met with "The Golden Shield Project" aka "The Great Firewall
of China". That doesn't seem like a fair deal at all.

~~~
jza00425
You mean American tech companies. Stop playing this West vs China, It is just
US.

~~~
linkregister
I think your tone is overly aggressive and accusatory.

European countries have a large trade deficit with China (€170B)[1]. The U.S.
had about double the amount of trade deficit ($336B), mostly due to its
greater value of imports [2].

This doesn't prove that China restricts access to its markets by European
companies, but it provides evidence that the situation may not be as simple as
you suggest.

1\.
[http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-120...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-12072016-BP-
EN.pdf/67bbb626-d55f-4032-8c24-48e4c9f78c3a)

2\. [https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-
taiwan/peo...](https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-
taiwan/peoples-republic-china)

~~~
jza00425
Trade deficit does not suggest anything. Whenever China tries to buy some
technology, the US is so protective and at the same time buy all the clothes
and low profit stuff. That is how you get the trade deficit. So it is pretty
much that EU and US just keep Chinese work like slave forever. By the way, it
is really just American tech companies. not a single european company's name
pop up in my mind.

~~~
linkregister
This is a bizarre and false statement. U.S. companies have been selling
technology to Chinese companies and consumers for decades.

Routers (Cisco), farm equipment (Caterpillar), software (AutoCAD, Microsoft,
Oracle, etc), medical devices (GE), factory equipment (GE), microchips (AMD,
Intel, Qualcomm), high-precision measurement (Agilent/Keysight), etc.

The list is absurdly long. Your agenda is preventing you from seeing a more
balanced view of things. Try to read a bit about cooperation between the two
countries, such as huge foreign investment in Shenzhen, exchange programs
between Chinese and American universities, success of Chinese technology firms
in the U.S. (Huawei, Nexus 6P; Almost all solar panel companies; etc)

------
nullnilvoid
This reminds me of the Ming and Qing dynasty when the emperors decided to
close the door and shut out foreigners. Gradually, China fell behind and the
western powers bombed the door open during the opium war.

It is unlikely that other countries will bomb open the door this time, as
China is a great military power. Instead, it will be disbenefit to Chinese
people and consumers as they cannot access the services from outside.

~~~
jjoonathan
Maybe. It's certainly true that protectionist policies tend to destroy tons of
economic value, but remember that "economic value" itself is a notion whose
definition has been carefully cultivated to steer thought away from the weak
bits of western economic theory (here: tragedies of the commons / damage to
third parties outside each transaction). The sum total of consumer
inconvenience caused by the Great Firewall could well be worth the economic
self-sufficiency and industrial prowess it bought. There is value in laying a
foundation today for tomorrow's competitive industries, but you won't see it
until too late if you limit your thinking to the margin.

Don't get me wrong, the GFW is also motivated by the corruption, censorship,
and manipulation it enables, and I don't see a silver lining in any of those.
I just wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the strategic value of protectionism.

~~~
nullnilvoid
The GFW is not so much motivated by protectionism but by CPC's tight grip on
power and greed, to my understanding. If the CPC are adopting protectionism to
cultivate their own tech industry, it is about time for them to loosen the
Internet control because Chinese tech industry are very strong and established
at this moment. It is unlikely for western counterparts to out-compete them in
China market even on level playground. Among the top 10 most valuable Internet
companies, China has four of them.

------
coldcode
Everyone want to be like China and control their internet, their people and
their industry and avoid external competition. Most countries can't quite do
it or are unwilling to because it does have downsides.

------
contingencies
Utter crap.

I have and continue to run companies inside of China, and have lived here on
and off for 16 years. IMHO like most of the China-focused muck-slinging coming
out of US media (increasingly frequently of late), this article lacks context
and basically cries wolf over nothing concrete whatsoever.

First it claims "required security checks on companies in industries like
finance and communications, and mandatory in-country data storage". That's
really no different to EU and US regulations. Anyway, if the journalist (who
according to the dateline allegedly published from Hong Kong) had basic
knowledge about mainland China, they would know that _foreigners are largely
barred from finance and communications-related business anyway_ (despite China
committing to open finance when it joined the WTO).

Finally, in China it's _extremely_ common for new laws to be made (eg.
"smoking inside is illegal") but absolutely zero enforcement to be done.

(Edit in response to stupendous quantity of downvotes: Oh sorry for having an
informed opinion instead of upvoting faux-journalism that agrees with ignorant
anti-foreign sensibilities. The evil freedom-destroying communists are coming!
Run for the hills!)

------
rdiddly
Biased article. Apparently some people can't grasp the fact that being
isolated from the world is the least of China's worries.

~~~
frozenport
The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade and
technology transfer to China. Further, many companies are, in the present,
heavily invested. While it might be the least of China's worries, it certainly
should not be the least of ours.

~~~
sangnoir
> The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade
> and technology transfer to China.

As a CxO, if you are going to meet the ever-rising quarterly growth target and
all you've reached saturation in all your markets, you'll have to pander to
China at some point soon. You aren't paid to worry about the long-term, the
future CEO will deal with that. All you need to do is beat the street and keep
the shareholders happy for the next quarter/FY.

