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September 23, 2014

Chinese Censorship of Internet Hampering Country's Future Economic Strength

By Christopher Mohr, TMCnet Contributing Writer

Anyone who has even casually followed the political climate in China is aware of that nation’s practices when it comes to censorship. Content relating to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, freeing Tibet, East Turkestan liberation and any other content deemed politically subversive has been blocked for years. Although it gives the Chinese government a sense of control over what content its citizens read, censorship is harming the country’s ability to enjoy continued economic growth.



Time Magazine lists six websites that were either heavily restricted or blocked in June, days before the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. At that time, Google (News - Alert) had a dramatic drop in traffic, after the search engine and services, like Maps, Picasa and Calendar were blocked. Pages on Wikipedia dealing with ‘subversive’ content like the Dalai Lama were not accessible. A block of the Wall Street Journal’s English site was followed with another block of the Chinese version of the site. Social media sites LinkedIn and Facebook (News - Alert) were blocked and so was RedTube, a pornographic site.

Difficulty accessing sites, especially the ones containing Google’s various apps, is preventing many in China from being able to do their work. Employees cannot use Google Drive to share files and collaborate; academics that rely on Google Scholar cannot use that site to perform research and developers do not have access to code libraries normally available online.

These censorship policies will only hurt China’s economy in the long run. The country has long had the reputation as a provider of cheap labor, but recently labor and other costs tied to offshore manufacturing have risen. Some jobs have moved to Vietnam and even Africa where costs are cheaper.

Since cheap labor is gradually fading away as a viable economic strategy for China, it must pursue other strategies to continue economic growth. One of the worst ways to achieve that objective is to censor the Internet so much that researchers cannot keep up to date with experts in their field and businesses must spend considerable time on technological workarounds just to do simple collaboration. The Chinese government is going to have to choose between control and economic prosperity, because the days of it being able to have both are numbered. 




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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