There are many problems with the hukou system and most people in China do not like it at all. But you are spreading LIES. It may be difficult for a rural hukou child to get public education in a big city, but certainly not impossible. A rural hukou person can get services at any public hospital without any problem. He just doesn't have health insurance to cover his expenses.

Saying that hukou is hereditary is misleading. Except for the two megacities (Beijing and Shanghai), it's trivial to get a city hukou if you have a college degree. Also things are changing now. In developed areas, a rural hukou may be more desirable than a city hukou because with a rual hukou you are entitled to many unique benefits provided by your village.

Blocking 99% is good enough. China is not trying to totally block outside information. They are just trying to keep a lid on organized dissent. Western news publications are commonly available at newsstands, although an occasional story on Tibet, or Xinjiang, or Xi Jinping's offshore bank accounts, will be torn out. Most urban Chinese are better informed about what is going on in the world than typical Americans. China is actually more worried about social networks, where people can organize outside of party control. So Facebook is blocked, and instead they have WeChat and QQ, which are monitored and controlled.

Also, the Chinese Firewall is not "stupid". It may be evil, but it is not stupid. It is very effective at accomplishing its goals.

China has never even tried to implement a classless society. In fact, they did the opposite, by strengthening feudalism and binding the poor to the land. Everyone in China is issued a Hukou identification card at birth, that has their hereditary class printed on it. If you have the "wrong" class, as 80% of the population does, then you can be deprived of public education, housing, and even food. 99% of the 30 million people that starved to death during the Great Leap Forward had low class (rural) hukous. Today, about half the children in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, have no right to attend public school, or go to a public hospital.

One reason that the Chinese and outsiders see the Tiananmen Square incident very differently, is that the protesters never called for reform of the Hukou system. Outsiders see the protesters as heroes standing against oppression. Many Chinese see them as spoiled offspring of the urban elite trying to preserve their privileges.

I don't know how you got this impression of Mercurial. My experience is the exact opposite. Mercurial encourages small, frequent commits. With "hg rebase" and "hg histedit", a revision history can be edited very easily. Git only makes things unnecessarily complicated by having an index.

were ready to blast China again. But of course it's the American and Western imperialists at work, the CIA/MI6 up to their nefarious ways as usual. But of course, Western hypocrites and Slashdot/Reddit anti-China hate brigade, your team can never commit a foul while everything the other team does is a foul, right?

So you're telling me that the US doesn't spy on Russia and China, and that they don't execute cyberattacks against Al-Qaeda or the Taliban? Western hypocrisy on display right here for the umpteenth time.

The day there is "democracy" in China, there will be an American flag flying over Tiananmen Square, and that day will never come in a million years. "Democracy", "freedom", and "human rights" are merely code words for American imperialism. They will freely support brutal dictators when it suits their interests, while discrediting and undermining free elections that result in an unfriendly government. Remember Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were once on the CIA's payroll and lauded as "freedom fighters", while Saddam Hussein was once a staunch American ally. But the American Empire will never succeed in conquering China.

How the hell does someone who is 6 years old know anything about what's going on around them anyway, especially issues of politics and governance? All he knows is what his parents told him, and given that they defected they were probably traitors anyway.

Microsoft gets it. You will follow our laws if you want to do business in our country, otherwise you can GTFO. If Brin wants to lose money on purpose for a farcical and irrelevant cause, he can do so by all means. Google's shareholders won't be so happy with him.

They will follow our laws, or they won't be doing business in our country. If they want to leave their 30% market share behind, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Baidu has the other 70% and will gladly take the 30%.

If they want to holler "human rights" and make up random junk about hackers, then they can GTFO. We will not knuckle under to a foreign corporation and give them extraterritoriality. The time for that has passed by more than 60 years. Google needs us more much more than we need them, although that's not saying much since we don't need Google at all.

Complaining that China is not "open politically" or other such garbage is simply a code word for saying that China refuses to submit to American imperialism. I support that 150%. China will never again be the lapdogs of the West. Long live the People's Republic of China!

They will follow our laws, or they won't be doing business in our country. If they want to leave their 30% market share behind, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Baidu has the other 70% and will gladly take the 30%.

If they want to holler "human rights" and make up random junk about hackers, then they can GTFO. We will not knuckle under to a foreign corporation and give them extraterritoriality. The time for that has passed by more than 60 years.

Baidu can just take over the other 30% market share it doesn't have, but Google loses quite a bit of revenue.

I wonder how the next Google stockholder's meeting will go if Google leaves, how can the Board answer the question of why the stockholders' interests (i.e. profits) were blatantly compromised for empty, useless proclamations of "human rights?"

Google will cave because they need us and we don't need them. "Human rights" are a ridiculous non-issue. Nobody in power in the world actually cares at all, they just use it to rile up their own people against foreign governments. When push comes to shove stuff will get done and "human rights" will not get in the way.

I guess Google couldn't live without it's 25% market share in China. Clearly it needs the cash. We don't need Google, but Google needs us, and that's a fact.

All you morons who thought Google would actually cause China to cave and not the other way around, how does that crow taste?

Also, what a retarded article summary, clearly if they didn't follow our laws we were going to kick them out of China, the "concrete action" the summary refers to. The implicit threat of this was obviously enough for them to cave. Again, we don't need Google, but Google needs us.

We're justified in accusing Boeing of bugging our government officials' planes?

Western/American hypocrisy on display right here, as usual.

How will she backpedal this time after we make menacing statements on how reliable we think T-Bonds are? How will Obama clean up her mess?

If you want to get real progress on the real issues between China and the United States (i.e. NOT HUMAN RIGHTS), keep Hillary out of it. We'd like to discuss and make progress on those issues but not when Hillary the irrational China-Hater is out there spewing garbage about "human rights".