Tal vez algún día recordaremos el espectáculo del interrogatorio al director ejecutivo de TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, que tuvo lugar el 23 de marzo en el Congreso estadounidense, como un punto de inflexión en la historia de la globalización. Durante más de cinco horas de agresivos cuestionamientos, Chew —que no es chino sino Singapurense— defendió magníficamente el hecho de que su empresa sea China frente a la limitada comprensión del mundo tecnológico que tiene el Congreso.
El gobierno de Biden considera a TikTok como una posible amenaza para la seguridad nacional y desea que la empresa china controlante, ByteDance, venda la plataforma a una empresa estadounidense o enfrente una posible prohibición.… Seguir leyendo »
At the very moment that Russia and China are facing more pressure from Western governments to stop malicious cyberattacks, they’ve announced a pact to work together for new rules to control cyberspace.
In the annals of diplomatic hypocrisy, this new accord is a stunner, even by Russian and Chinese standards. It promotes a new Russian plan for international governance of the global Internet, even as it stresses the right of Russia, China and other authoritarian states “to regulate the national segment of the Internet” to edit and censor what their people can see.
The June 28 Russia-China accord was revealed in a little-noticed posting the next day by the Chinese embassy in Moscow, which was sent to me by a European Internet activist.… Seguir leyendo »
As China and the United States engage in high-level negotiations over a possible trade deal, it’s puzzling to see what’s been left off the table: the Chinese internet market. China blocks or hinders nearly every important foreign competitor online, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia in Chinese, Pinterest, Line (the major Japanese messaging company), Reddit and The New York Times. Even Peppa Pig, a British cartoon character and internet video sensation, has been censored on and off; an editorial in the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper once warned that she could “destroy children’s youth.”
China has long defended its censorship as a political matter, a legitimate attempt to protect citizens from what the government regards as “harmful information,” including material that “spreads unhealthy lifestyles and pop culture.”… Seguir leyendo »
Everybody knows about the Great Firewall of censorship in China. Many see the specter of an even deeper surveillance state in the times ahead, as artificial intelligence and big data controlled by the authorities track all citizens with a social credit score.
Previously in The WorldPost, Francis Fukuyama wrote about “the unimagined forms that a 21st century totalitarian state can take” in China. Xiao Qiang, the founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times, has also warned of the rise of a “digital totalitarian state.”
But there is another side to the story of Chinese society so densely connected through the Internet.… Seguir leyendo »
According to estimates by the China Internet Network Information Center, there were 751 million Internet users in China as of June 30, 2017. That is about 9 million more than Europe’s total population during the same time period. It is also more than twice the total U.S. population of 323 million people at the end of 2016.
Those 751 million individuals make up the world’s largest single Internet market. Every day, almost all of them will open WeChat, send messages and browse Moments, WeChat’s sharing platform. Every day, a significant majority of them will use WeChat Pay or Alipay to buy things in stores, supermarkets, restaurants and hotels.… Seguir leyendo »
Arriving in Beijing last month, I knew I would not be able to connect to Google, Facebook or Uber. As strange as it was to go without these staples of online life in the West, it was even stranger to find that local Chinese didn’t seem to feel deprived at all. They search through Baidu, get their social media fix on WeChat, hail rides on Didi, curate news through sites like Toutiao. And while they know Beijing is watching, they accept this surveillance as normal.
The Chinese government has carved out an alternative internet universe with its own brands, rules and culture, in which privacy doesn’t exist.… Seguir leyendo »
During its recent Lunar New Year gala show, state-run Chinese Central Television spotlighted a 93-year-old engineer who participated in China’s first nuclear submarine program. The program, which broadcasts to an audience of over 1 billion national and overseas viewers, lauded this guest of honor for dedicating his life to top-secret government work and for making huge sacrifices for the Communist Party. “For 30 years, he made no contact with his family for fear of giving away his knowledge and only told his father what he did for a living when the older man was on his deathbed,” the state report declared.… Seguir leyendo »
The censorship order handed down from the Chinese Communist Party earlier this year reads like a decree from a Puritan: depictions of underage drinking, gambling and extreme violence are not permitted online; images of scantily clad people and portrayals of homosexuality are off limits; spiritual figures and beliefs cannot be satirized.
The directive, aimed at China’s booming online entertainment industry, prompted uncommon outrage for the number of topics — 68 — it banned. The list includes not only the usual politically sensitive subjects but also subjects that have made the internet an exhilarating and liberating space for this country’s hundreds of millions of web users.… Seguir leyendo »
A finales del decenio de 1980, hubo un debate intenso sobre la llamada paradoja de la productividad; cuando inversiones enormes en tecnología de la información (TI) no estaban logrando mejoras apreciables en materia de productividad. Dicha paradoja está de vuelta y plantea un problema tanto a los Estados Unidos como a China que puede plantearse en su Diálogo Económico y Estratégico anual.
En 1987, el premio Nobel Robert Solow expresó su famosa broma: “Se ve la era de las computadoras por doquier, excepto en las estadísticas de productividad.” La paradoja de la productividad pareció resuelta en el decenio de 1990, cuando los Estados Unidos experimentaron un renacimiento espectacular de la productividad.… Seguir leyendo »
The Chinese government has declared the Internet to be the new battlefield in its fight against "pornography and unlawful information."
The chilling reality is that the main casualty of this cyberwar is freedom of expression. China's Internet model is one of extreme control. The authorities use an army of censors to stifle dissent.
In January, the Orwellian "State Internet Information Office" announced it had shut down scores of websites and more than 100 social media accounts for "distorting history of the Communist Party and the nation."
Under the guise of a campaign to ensure social stability, the Chinese authorities suppress online debate on a range of legitimate issues.… Seguir leyendo »
Cuando Alibaba, el imparable gigante chino del comercio electrónico, comenzó a cotizar en la Bolsa de Nueva York a finales del año pasado, se convirtió de la noche a la mañana en la decimoséptima empresa más grande del mundo que cotiza en la bolsa, alcanzando una capitalización de mercado de 230 mil millones dólares – mayor a la de Amazon, eBay, o Facebook. Sin embargo, parece que a Europa no llegaron estas noticias.
De hecho, en lugar de responder al crecimiento digital de China, la Unión Europea se ha mantenido obsesionada con el éxito mundial de las plataformas estadounidenses, como por ejemplo Amazon, Facebook y Google, e incluso ha amenazando tomar acciones punitivas contra ellas.… Seguir leyendo »
Es una historia que se ha dado a conocer en todo el mundo, la adopción de Internet alcanza niveles enormes, lo que cambia la forma de hacer negocios y origina operaciones que se calculan en billones de dólares en los mercados de bienes y servicios digitales –y además provoca una “destrucción creativa” masiva. Le toca ahora a China experimentar este fenómeno –solo que en el caso chino se desarrolla paralelamente con una profunda transformación económica y un rápido cambio social. El choque entre estas dos fuerzas podría alterar fundamentalmente la segunda economía más grande del mundo.
En China hay 632 millones de usuarios de Internet y esto ya dio lugar a un sector tecnológico dinámico, que impulsa las redes sociales y el mercado e-tail más grande del mundo (comercio electrónico de venta directa al consumidor).… Seguir leyendo »
From the moment we land in China, Americans must adjust to an aggressively censored version of the Internet, sanitized of the United States’ most iconic brands. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are blocked. Google is partially blocked and sometimes runs through a ringer of digital interference that makes it painfully slow. The New York Times and Bloomberg News are off-limits, while the Wall Street Journal and other U.S. news sites endure targeted blockages of stories deemed sensitive.
This censorship is not just an inconvenience but also a reminder that many leading U.S. media and technology companies are excluded, or largely excluded, from one of the world’s largest markets and this country’s largest trading partner.… Seguir leyendo »
Long the most fragmented nation on earth, China is being brought together like never before by a new connectivity. Its Internet community is expanding at hyper speed, with profound implications for the Chinese economy, to say nothing of the country’s social norms and political system. This genie cannot be stuffed back in the bottle. Once connected, there is no turning back.
The pace of transformation is breathtaking. According to Internet World Stats, the number of Internet users in China has more than tripled since 2006, soaring to 485 million in mid-2011 – more than three times that in 2006. Moreover, China’s rush to connectivity is far from over.… Seguir leyendo »
A Chinese spy story with a reverse twist surfaced in Beijing last week, providing further evidence that China's rulers are having trouble maintaining their tight control over the Internet.
Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan of the People's Liberation Army, in what he apparently thought was an internal briefing, revealed half a dozen cases of Chinese officials who had spied for Britain, the United States and other countries. Somehow, the video of his sensational disclosures leaked out. Clips of his hours-long talk appeared on at least two Chinese websites, Youku.com and Tudou.com, but were quickly removed by government censors.
China's crackdown on political activists and commentators in light of the Jasmine revolutions sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa was expected. The latest high-profile case is Sunday's disappearance of Yang Hengjun, a Chinese-born Australian novelist who was visiting in Guangzhou. That Mr. Yang once worked in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs always marked him as a person of interest to the authorities. But the fact that he also is a frequent contributor to more than 10 blogs that appear on Chinese portals tells us that Beijing is increasingly worried that its strategy to control the Internet could be failing.… Seguir leyendo »
La batalla de Google contra China es una historia que define nuestra época. Como si fuera un león ante un cocodrilo, el poder blando mundial de la empresa estadounidense de Internet se enfrenta al poder duro territorial del Estado chino, en un choque al que contribuyen la mayor revolución en la tecnología de la información desde que Johannes Gutenberg inventó la imprenta de tipos móviles en el siglo XV y la mayor transferencia mundial de poder desde la ascensión geopolítica de Occidente, que algunos historiadores sitúan también en el siglo XV. Lo que es indudable es esto: tardaremos en ver un claro ganador.… Seguir leyendo »
Han Han is a 28-year-old bestselling author, racing driver and blogger who is a star of Chinese cyberspace. He is also one of the most outspoken critics of government censorship, and his blogposts are often deleted by censors. Nevertheless, his main blog has over 300m hits. In an online poll Han Han ran recently on his blog about a corrupt official, 210,000 people voted. Yet it is not just Han Han's words that are so influential, but the internet technologies – searches, file-sharing, RSS, blogging, microblogging, image and video-sharing, social networking, etc – that allow them to spread freely, despite government censorship.… Seguir leyendo »
Hay quien habla de un movimiento histórico. ¿Una provocación en nombre de la libertad? No va a ser tan simple. Google esquiva la censura del Gobierno chino desviando a los usuarios de google.cn a google.com.hk, con base en Hong Kong. No es nada nuevo: estás en China sin estar. Hong Kong lo usamos los extranjeros para renovar visados que en el continente no nos renovarían con facilidad y lo usan cantidad de empresas como sede para operar en China evitando problemas burocráticos. El Gobierno chino lo tolera porque se lleva un margen de beneficio importante: si en el país tienen un índice de crecimiento del 8% anual no es solo porque trabajan como chinos, sino porque les pagamos para que trabajen como tales.… Seguir leyendo »
Las motivaciones de Google para pelearse con el Gobierno chino a plena luz cuentan menos que el juego que están abriendo. Al retar públicamente a un enorme poder político se afirma como actor político cuyo poder no radica en un territorio, cohetes o divisiones blindadas, pero sí en una red global de servidores, ancho de banda e imagen pública renovada. Nadie pone en duda el deseo de sus dirigentes -cuando pueden- de "No hacer el mal" (Don't do evil), como reza el lema de la empresa que, sin embargo, no les impidió aceptar la censura china desde 2006 y hace de este giro repentino una medida no del todo convincente.… Seguir leyendo »
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