I am the author of this blog post. I previously worked in IT before coming to China almost a year ago. Currently, I teach English and enjoy reading, researching, and writing with the free time this new profession affords me.
I've lurked HN for a while, but haven't given back in any way until today. My friend enjoyed this piece and encouraged me to share it to a wider audience, so here you are.
It sounds like you are hearing a lot of pro-Google sentiment, but here in Ningbo, all I get from people is anger. Curiously enough, the anger is not about Google or the censors, but it seems more about the West 'trying to push China around...' or 'trying to keep China down...'
So much so that I've learned to avoid even remotely political conversations with people here.
Maybe I should start hanging out with more English speakers, but then I wouldn't be able to learn as much of the language.
Sigh...
It's difficult for me to gauge the Chinese reaction on my own, though. A handful of translated comments or an online poll don't amount to anything, really. Doubly so once you're aware of the "50-cent gangsters" who are paid to astroturf online (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party and http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20091221_1.htm). The best resource I have are my adult students who spend the time online and can give me their impressions. So far, their responses have been to the tune of: "If Google leaves, what am I going to do!? I use GMail and many other services, and the search engine is better than Baidu for finding information in English. It's a critical part of my work!"
It should be noted that all of them (university-level and older) are aware of the censorship, they just have differing ideas on its necessity.
Do they feel like the West is unfairly criticizing China? The Party loves playing the victim, probably because Western media affords them ample opportunity. What better way to unify the Chinese and distract them from a growing number of domestic problems than an enormous external enemy? But it's probably not always the direct work of the government - the Chinese are culturally cohesive, where the group is more important than the individual. Nationalism and its ilk pop up so often in the discussions here with students, it's frightening. (I used to live in Japan before coming here, and naturally it comes up when meeting new people. Actually having to try and reassure some people that modern Japan does not want to invade China and enslave them is unreal.)
Honestly, it's tough to say if such anti-Western reactions are genuine (thought out and justified) or just an internalized defensive mechanism.
When I worked at Microsoft I got to listen to people working on relationship with China around software licensing (i.e not Bing). Accordibng to them the micro-software sells very well there. It was not a smooth sailing by any means and it took a lot of work, not unlike it took Bill Gates a lot of work to start selling software in the US when people were copying it for free instead in 1970s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists). The visit of Chinese president to Microsoft campus couple of years ago has symbolized the turning point.
Could you help me reconcile your point quoted above with the first-hand information I was presented? Thank you.
As for those ordinary users who often trawl underground software/movie markets, they are the ones who will probably never be tempted to "go genuine." They aren't under pressure from the MS/PRC back-scrubbing to do so. It's likely that most people don't need to find a Windows CD if they've already purchased a computer with it pre-installed, but anything else is open game. The vast majority of these ordinary users are purely driven by cost, and if they're buying the cheapest pirated CDs (hey, even pirates have to compete), that money isn't making it's way back to Microsoft.
As an aside, the biggest reason why I would never buy from these markets in China is that some of the software is infected with trojans. "You get what you pay for," right? ;)
Off-topic, there, you were warned, but I've never understood lurking HN, reddit, digg, or any other karma-driven web community since all it takes is an upvote or downvote and suddenly you are no longer lurking. I mean why not create an account to simply save what you like? I think there is this sensitivity towards karma that affects HN more so than other communities, both good and bad, given it's intellectual user base and it's alliance to pg. IMO, karma is merely an indicator of user input and a value the rest of that community (the hive-mind) assigns for each input; my point being that as long as you're upvoting and downvoting anything you're still contributing, not lurking.
There were 2 points raised by Google...
(1) requiring google.cn results to be censored. This doesn't affect me, I just use google.com
(2) increased censorship over the past year, e.g. blocked sites, including blogger and all blogspot pages, all google groups subpages, and of course youtube.
This affects me!
Using proxies on blogspot doesn't help because the firewall detects the actual html content. Free vpn connect addresses are also very quickly blocked.
Google services seem to have been singled out here. Just seems like domestic industry protection.
according to: http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/googl...
Baidu's market share for search in China was about 77% in the third quarter, up from 75.6% in the second quarter. Google (GOOG), she says, lost share in China, dropping to 17% in the third quarter, from about 19% in the second quarter.
At first he explained that he thought most people wouldn't care because they all use Baidu. But when I explained that Google was going to turn off censorship and filtering or leave, he seemed to get a little flustered. I think he couldn't imagine either possibility. He said he thought they would stay, but with less filtering than before.
I felt like the subject was getting touchy so we left it there. But I do find it plausible that Google's move will shock the average Internet user in China, especially if it shocks my relatively well-informed friend.
For all the talk of corruption, censorship, and privacy, the Chinese government is surprisingly transparent at the macro level.
Gates and co knew going into China that the government will not budge regarding issues that even remotely threaten their political legitimacy. This point extends itself naturaully to the economic arena as well, as it forms the foundation of CCP's legitimacy for the past few decades.
So all the IP frou-frouing in your post seems off-the-mark to me, not to mention that blatant copying can be found in really any developing economy. Before the rise of China, recall that the centers of piracy were in HK, Taiwan, and Korea. Innovation is derivative and when you can't you copy until you can.
This is a natural phenomenon of economic growth.
Anyways thanks for trying to be at least more nuanced in your analysis, instead of casting blame only on one side.
