The Great (Fire) Wall of China

Of course it is frustrating the first time you get a taste of internet censorship in China.  In our write-up last Sunday, we dwelled on the apparent contrast between Hong Kong and Kunming, about 2-1/2 hours flying distance by commercial airline, both Chinese cities but apparently on extreme parts of the spectrum.  In Hong Kong you get ready, real-time world-class cosmopolitan services distinct from Kunming's prefectural city appeal and very restrictive digital connectivity.  Besides the difficulty in using credit card or foreign currency.

In the past, a lot of western experts (as well as ordinary internet users) had been quite critical of censorship of any kind, especially the one exercised by no less than the government of China itself.  And many had predicted that this will backfire on that country as the rest of the world raced on an expanding virtual sphere opening wired and wireless technology to new frontiers with economic expansionist benefits. China maintained its right to censor cyberspace claiming that it has the right to govern the internet according to its own rules inside its borders.  Critics argued, "but cyberspace is borderless!"

This is where modern concepts and technology meet head-on.  True, it is difficult, even illogical to contain the internet within a defined border. But the existence of nations and states dating back to pre-recorded history still allots jurisdiction to countries even in the age of globalization and internationalism. Even international business and the world economy still respects borders which is why you still need to go through customs, immigration, and quarantine when you travel from country to country. No amount of facilitation can eradicate border control, unless the United Nations become one nation!

So whether we like it or not, any country can do within its borders what it wants, subject to some universal agreements of course, such as basic human rights. And while a lot of countries belong to, and are signatories to, the United Nations and other similar international bodies, we still retain our own individual identities and governments, and decisions on how to do things. If a country restricts the internet as what China does, one can only complain or criticize - there's nothing we can do about it. To a certain extent, everybody does regulate, to a certain extent - even the United States of America. In our country, people even wanted to regulate a website that promotes having an affair!

But as I said in the last article, not only did China manage to manage the negative side effects of its censorship, it even turned it around and capitalized on it, to the consternation of critics who nothing good about it for China.  Access and connectivity are usually in two opposite directions, so if an ordinary Chinese user cannot access a (prohibited) website outside of China, the latter cannot also reach the former. And since the main activity in the internet is economic, i.e., selling "things" or "services," producers cannot reach consumers. Guess which country is the single biggest market in terms of population today?

China blocks Google, Facebook, Twitter, and countless others.  If they want to access the Chinese market, they have to do it through the terms demanded by the Chinese government. Take it or leave it. Now, huge multi-billion internet companies are sprouting inside China, leaving the rest of the world, no recourse but to follow Chinese protocol.  Whatever the rest of the world has, there is a Chinese equivalent, with a captive market of 1.4 billion Chinese population. And just recently, here comes the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), meant to rival the World Bank, commonly believed to be controlled by the U.S. Many countries are signing up with AIIB, among them surprisingly, U.S. allied countries.

We might get frustrated by this Great (Fire) Wall of China. But it seems they have the last laugh. It won't be too far-fetched sometime in the future, this column, Streetlife, might be written in Chinese …