Google in China - The Big Disconnect

wile_e_wonka writes "The NY Times (registration required) has an article about Google's history in China (beginning way before this whole censorship thing). The article, among other things, talks about of Google's head of operations in China, and his goals for the company there. From the article: 'Lee can sound almost evangelical when he talks about the liberating power of technology. The Internet, he says, will level the playing field for China's enormous rural underclass; once the country's small villages are connected, he says, students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.'"

liberated

[joe 155]

I like the way he talks about the liberating power of technology... so long as you don't want to discuss anything that the government doesn't agree with... or want to find out what happened in Tianamen square, or if you want to have unrestricted access to other webpages. But appart from that it does makes people completely free, free as a (caged) bird

Yeah that's what'll happen.

[merlin_jim]

students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.'

Cause, you know, just look at the US - Internet access for the past 10 years has turned the current crop of high schoolers into a bunch of geniuses, all just itching to discover antigravity or write a new sociopolitical theory that eliminates inflation and market swings...

lol of course on the other hand my little brother of 14 is writing better games than I was at 18...

Getting around Chinas Firewall

[bigwavejas]

Unfortunately I think a lot of what's seen in China is going to be censored, even if there are ways to get around their firewall (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4496163.s tm [bbc.co.uk]). I think most people aren't technically savvy enough or too lazy to bother searching for ways to beat the system, but there are those who will (even if its just a handful) and one can only hope the information will disseminate to the average person in China.

Hm, let's see...

[greenguy]

students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves

That sounds great... until you think it through. Besides connected villages, this would also requires students who have...

1. Advanced English, including technical vocabulary.
2. A high-school education. A *good* high-school education.
3. Reliable power and Internet connections.
4. Consistent and extensive access to a computer hooked up to the net. A printer might be nice, too.
5. Considerable time to study.
6. Exceptional levels of self-motivation.
7. No problems with the government, which will inevitably monitor their activities.
8. No problems with family, which might or might not think this is a good use of one's time.
9. Etc.

I'm all about the rural poor becoming educated in China and everywhere, but it's going to take more than access to Google to do it.

Google Freedom 2.0

[digitaldc]

students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.

But what good is an ivy-league education if you can't freely express your ideas?

Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I think most people aren't technically savvy enough or too lazy to bother searching for ways to beat the system

You're dead on here. I've read articles on the BBC about how many Chinese people actually support censorship. They, not the government, put pressure on local newcasts to only report "happy news". Many Chinese people view the restrictions as helpful in weeding out unwelcome "foreign influence".

While it might come as a big surprise to Slashdotters, I suspect that the majority of Chinese people know that they are being censored and they really don't care. They are more interested in buying apartments to live in and saving up for more consumer goods than worrying about whether or not they can search for anything under the sun. I also suspect that most Chinese people would be very surprised to learn that many in the west view them as living under a repressive government. I have no doubt that the majority of Chinese people would not make such an assessment themselves.

Pipe Dream

[Zebra_X]

The Internet, he says, will level the playing field for China's enormous rural underclass; once the country's small villages are connected, he says, students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves

"Fully Educate Themselves". Not likely. For one, the courses are in english. Two, almost all of the courses on M.I.T.'s Open Courseware site require the purchase of multiple $100+ text books. In addition there is no feedback when following the courses. Unless you understand *how* to learn its very difficult to use these courses effectively.

Those are issues though, that only come to pass when "all the villiages are connected" and by definition reliably powered (which they are not). Furthermore, access is great - however the very nature of learning, long periods of reading, problem solving require that those wishing to learn have a dedicated console, or computer to utilize.

I'm all for educating the masses, I just think that running around spouting this "vision" is disingenuous.

Re:liberated

[Anonymous Coward]

The straw man argument again?

There are significant discrepancies between Tienamman Square and Iraq, especially in that context.

Tienamman Square involved the killing of nonviolent protestors against the government, by their own government. I am no expert on the matter, but it is my belief that their claims of corruption in the government (amongst other things) had at least a significant portion of truth to them. This is only reinforced by what a social taboo Tienamman square has become in China, as well as the state sponsored restriction of information on the topic.

The matter of Iraq is a reactionary military invasion and subsequent occupation of a hostile state. We had every justification to take military military action against them from the moment they refused to honor their obligation to prove they lacked WMD's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_action s_regarding_Iraq [wikipedia.org] [On January 16, 2003 U.N. inspectors discovered 11 empty 122 mm chemical warheads ? components not previously declared by Iraq. Iraq dismissed the warheads as old weapons that had been packed away and forgotten. After performing tests on the warheads, U.N. inspectors believe that they were new. While the warheads are evidence of an Iraqi weapons program, they may not amount to a "smoking gun", according to U.S. officials, unless some sort of chemical agent is also detected. U.N. inspectors believe there to still be large quantities of weapons materials that are still unaccounted for. U.N. inspectors also searched the homes of several Iraqi scientists.]

That, and the major fact that you CAN find information about Iraq, you can raise criticisms against the US government, and you can even get together and protest the invasion of Iraq without worrying about getting squished by a tank! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tian asquare.jpg [wikimedia.org]

If in China you try and say that the government needs some reforms, you can be put in jail. And what you say has no sanctity at all - it has no protection under law, but rather is prosecuted.

Think about that. Your post, if reversed so that you said it in China, about Tienamman Square, could land you in JAIL.

And while the fact that some pretty unaccpetable things have been done by our government, they are generally not allowed to propogate, and are rarely sanctioned by law. While this wire-tapping and PATRIOT act nonsense has some strong criticisms against it, I think that the fact that you are so willing and able to criticize your own country disproves your own argument.

Re: "fully educate themselves."

[sydneyfong]

Yes.

I am technically from China as well (Hong Kong) as well, although I have never grown up in any "communist state" (whatever that means).

Most people criticing China's "human rights" problems don't stick to facts, but to proganda by the western media that is almost twenty years old. They like to believe that "my country is better than yours", despite the fact that this is becoming more and more doubtful.

Let me say this: nobody cares about people in China. All they care about is that "American values are better than Chinese values (and you should adopt them at whatever cost, even if it means that you overthrow your own government)". I mean, if anyone really takes a serious look at what actually happens in China, I'm sure they'll suddenly find that their dicks weren't as long as they previously thought.

PS: Of course, there are those who really do care. But those people typically tackle the issue realistically instead of suggesting an overthrow of the CCP or something to that effect.

RTFA. You missed a major point.- risk taking.

[Tungbo]

The author started his journey fixated on an 'absolutist' stance on freedom of speech, much as you are demonstrating. In the course of developing the article, he came to see that there ARE gradations in such freedom and that insisting on jummping instantly to an imagined 'pure' state may not be that productive.
It's so easy to look pious rather than make the hard choices as Google did.

The most exciting behavior that I read in the article is the exploding level
of voluntary participation, expression, and personal choice to take more risk.
It is NOT the technologies themselves, but the behavior and perception changes
that they enable that will make the biggest difference.

I don't know ...

[constantnormal]

... what the answer here is -- I'm not entirely convinced that access to a censored internet will somehow eventually blossom into a democratic China, nor am I entirely convinced that it is possible (or impossible) to effectively censor the internet.

But I AM convinced that if the Chinese were to completely block outside content, creating a Chinese intranet with only government-approved content, it would be a stable system, and would satisfy the Chinese people's need for contact and communications... and would also be a horrible thing to have happen.

So I reluctantly support the western net services doing business in China under Chinese totalitarian rules.

But I do wonder how the Chinese authorities are going to deal with the influx of lots of tourists at the Olympic games, many of whom will want to photograph Tianamem Square and will inevitably ask a lot of awkward questions. If the Chinese want to interact with the West, they cannot avoid these things.

Recent PBS Frontline espisode

[Retired Replicant]

In recent Frontline episode on the Tianamen Square "Tank Man" (really a report on China's political and economic evolution since the massacre), it made it seem that the Chinese government has stopped funding public education in rural areas. Peasants now have to pay to send their children to school, which most can't afford. It seems as though China is working very intently on keeping the rural peasants ignorant and illiterate, so that they can be more easily controlled and exploited by the government, Western corporations, and the "new Chinese capitalist elite" in the big cities. I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government would allow this incredibly valuable slavelike underclass to learn enough to read web pages. The only ones who will benefit are the new Chinese capitalist elite, who have a similar vested interest in keeping the underclass ignorant.

Re:liberated

[jheath314]

I'll agree with your main point that the comparison of the United States to China is unfair. Make no mistake; Bush has taken us quite a few steps down that path, but we still have a long way to go before we reach the ugly state of dictatorship confronting the Chinese.

At the risk of going totally OT, I want to pick a fight over this minor point in your post:

The matter of Iraq is a reactionary military invasion and subsequent occupation of a hostile state. We had every justification to take military military action against them from the moment they refused to honor their obligation to prove they lacked WMD's.

Prove to me that you aren't hiding the holy grail somewhere on your property. No, throwing open your doors to my inspectors and digging up your yard won't be good enough... give me *proof* that you didn't hide it in some devious place my inspectors haven't thought of yet.

As you can imagine, proving a negative is somewhat difficult. Given the short window between when inspectors were allowed back into Iraq and the time the US invaded, it would have been impossible for a country as large as Iraq to furnish such proof, even if they had wished to comply in good faith. I was actually pretty surprised by the extent the Iraqis cooperated with the inspections just before the invasion... few countries would tolerate such violations of sovereignty, whether they were hiding something or not. Could you imagine the United States bending over and letting inspectors from other countries in to its most sensitive military bases?

Too bad for Bush and the neo-cons that no WMD were found. Maybe next time they'll let facts guide policy, instead of wishful thinking.

Re:liberated

[Dis*abstraction]

Can't speak for "liangzai," but the article tries to convey the idea that Western cultural norms, and specifically our worshipful deference to free speech, aren't universal by any means. Even here in the West, there are limits to freedom of speech--kiddie porn, as has been mentioned, but also things like Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi speech are censored in many parts of what we'd call the "free world." Ultimately the justification is that these policies promote a certain way of thinking, and stigmatize the repugnant; is it so inconceivable to you that Chinese culture might draw the line elsewhere?

This isn't to apologize for the government's repression of Tibetans, or its habit of haphazard and arbitrary detentions (which are growing less haphazard and arbitrary), or any of the rest of it. No government is perfect; the difference, perhaps, is that China's citizens feel theirs is improving, while I'm not so sure you could say the same about ours (I'm American).

Re:liberated

[sydneyfong]

Sigh. I'm not saying your argument is wrong, but I would like to add a few points.

It is true that in the USA, you won't get put into jail for protesting the war in Iraq. It is true that you won't even get put into jail for calling the President to step down.

HOWEVER.

Protests in the USA mean nothing. People protest against the war in Iraq? So what? Bush gets re-elected, and boasts proudly how the war has helped the world. In the USA, protests has become a means for citizens to vent their anger and to put them under the impression that they have "done something" for their cause -- but just look at what effect that has.

The "protests" that happened in Tienanmen back then was much, much, more serious than what you normally have in mind for a "protest".

I am not old enough to remember what happened in 1989. I live in Hong Kong, and my parents told me that scary things happened even that Hong Kong wasn't part of the PRC back then. There were riots in Hong Kong, home made bombs scattered around. I couldn't imagine what was happening in the mainland back then -- but I'm pretty sure the situation was worse. (a sidenote: the British colonial govt imposed a curfew in Hong Kong back then, so it's not something funny)

From my personal understanding, the students who protested back then took the protest seriously. They really thought the protests "meant something". They really were asking for change. They really believed in their cause. They demanded change, they demanded action, and they demanded to see it. And a substantial part of the rest of the country sympathized with and supported them. And at that time if there were any people who really believe in the ideologies and all that stuff and pursued the ideology with courage and vigor it was these student protestors.

The unfortunate thing was that the reality in China was far from ideal. Yes, I have no doubts whatsoever that the claims of corruption were substantially true. I have no doubts that corruption is a major problem in China till this day (and nobody is denying that. Former Premier Chu (among other top leaders) has spoken about his determination to fight corruption many times before).

So, what you have is a group of determined students who demanded nothing short of immediate change and action, and the unfortunate reality that the problems were so serious and deeply rooted that nothing short of a revolution at the national scale would solve them*. If the protesters were Americans, they'd have sat there for an afternoon or so and returned home thinking "tough luck we didn't get the message through". But no, the protesters stayed. For days. For weeks. And the situation grew tense. And at one point the government realized it's either another revolution in the national scale (read "devastating") unless they did something about it. And the "tank man" is the perfect illustration that nothing less than what was done would suffice.

It's a sad story. I'm not saying that stomping out your own citizens with tanks is "justified", but there really was no other alternative. In China, revolutions are not glorious. They are seen to be (and rightly so) bloody, endless wars, and cause major disasters to society. If a revolution was really to happen, millions of people would have been killed.

Since that event, everybody learnt a lesson. I'm not sure what the lesson was exactly, but I'm sure as hell that extreme cautions were made to avoid the same thing from happening again. And people from outside encouraging something similar to happen again definitely doesn't help.

*: and believe me, a revolution doesn't always help. A look at Chinese history reveals that. And Chinese are "experts" in revolutions... just take a quick glance at Chinese history if you don't know what I mean. The American revolutions are child's play compared with the scale of revolutions that happened in China.

Re:Hm, let's see...

[hotdiggitydawg]

Not to mention that they will be getting all this for free. I was fortunate enough to avoid a crippling student debt, but I have to wonder whether the availability of these materials irks American students. You come out of university after X years with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and yet someone somewhere else can get access to the same knowledge for free? For all you know Chinese universities could simply cut-and-paste the entire course, and I bet their students don't owe ridiculous amounts of money once they graduate.

Of course they can't leave the country, or enjoy many of the personal freedoms we have either, I guess...

Re:They're not even close...

[Spaceman40]

Unfortunately, they're not the only ones. Ask university students in the US, and I'd bet that around half wouldn't be able to tell you much about the Kent State shootings [wikipedia.org] (I mean, I knew about them, but I had to look up the name). Makes you wonder about other things you aren't taught about...

Re:liberated

[cbreaker]

I don't buy it.

Why is it okay for the Government to keep secrets? Perhaps some aspects of the military; troop locations and such - are something that should be kept a secret. But for almost everything else, I don't see it. We ARE the government, supposedly. We The People. It's supposed to be the citizens that make up the country and the government - why should only a few people be granted more access to YOUR country then you? What makes them so special? They're just people too. Citizens of our country.

Re:Hm, let's see...

[ajs]

I don't think anyone graduating from MIT is under the illusion that they paid all of that money for the course materials. The quality of the instructors, access to the research environment and the opportunities available to someone who is able to graduate from MIT are what you are paying for. The course materials are just the starting point.