This article discusses how Google plans to stop all cooperation with the Chinese Internet censorship program, and is considering shutting down through out the country. The Chinese, however, heard a very censored version of this news.
I thought this was very interesting and especially related to our discussion today in class about economics systems, and how there are so many different ones. This is also an interesting topic about public choice. It would be interesting to see how censored our news is and we might not even know it.
3 comments:
Chinese hackers and anyone dedicated enough can break through the Google Firewall. For anyone who wants a different take on censorship in China (and why it's a misguided approach to cracking down on dissidents in a country with 1.3 billion people but ultimately a better tool than some others), check out Susan Shirk's book on China, 'Fragile Superpower.'
In relation to the course, I find that the article points to the differences in culture that affect economic systems. Economic systems are changing constantly and these differences in culture point to differences in these economic systems. Google (as such a massive search engine) by removing itself from China could have an impact on the economy in china with possible second-hand effects in other parts of the world. We will have to wait and see what happens next.
In response to Hassee's comment with regards to the impact of the pull out of Google, i have been reading really interesting comments from both sides:
Some say that a pull out of Google makes economic sense as the sunk costs on this project is not that high and Google would not be financially hurt by it, furthermore, although it there has been gains in 2009 against Baidu, the local search engine, it still has a long way to go to becoming effective competition.
On the other hand, some say a pull out will leave experts from Google to go to local search engines or even the government which leaves the market of 300 million internet users unpenetrated.
Beyond the question of economics, what is perhaps more interesting is how long can such censorship prevail given the increasing interconnectedness of society.
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