Amazing Fact of the Day

An article published one year ago on the BBC website states that:

"Just two years ago, only 5% of Chinese internet users knew that the government censored the internet," Mr Mao says.

(He's some activist plotting the usage of firewall circumventing  software in china.)

At first I thought it was a communication error; he actually meant to say that only 5% of people know how to get round censoring.  It turns out that's not the case.  The figure seems suspect, but the point stands.  How can someone be so stupid as to think that the warning signs saying 'the content you are accessing does not adhere to law and therefore cannot be viewed' (a rough translation) is a normal internet message to receive.  What's more, law is subject to the country you live in, so even if you are an alien who has never seen a computer or the internet before, you know this message is based on the country in which you now reside.

Seriously dumb.

It's become better in recent times; some 35% (a different website, a newer report) now know that they're not seeing the real thing.

I think people are also failing to see the non-political reason behind the firewalls existence.  There are more people using the internet over there than anywhere else in the world.  They are using cloned services of everything we have in the West, the difference being that none of the revenues are heading to american multi-nationals.  They stay within china, and help ensure amazing growth by letting none of the profits leak outside of the country.  Couple this with the (literally tens of millions of) migrant workers who tend fields and build machines outside of china, who are a constant source of money flowing back into china (via web services accessible outside of china, but with operations squarely inside china) and you have a lucrative source of foreign investment, without the need to pay foreign taxes or have foreign headquarters.  If a UK company relied on expats to make money in this way, they would get nowhere as the incumbent group in question is tiny.  The chinese seem to perform every task in largesse, however - leading their internet machine to be worth billions, and it will continue to grow at the exponential rate their economy has been.


Wild prediction time - 2011 will be the year the chinese economy stumbles.

2012 will be the year the chinese economy falls flat on its face.  Lots of bloodshed will follow.