Some Reflections Of The Recent Trip

As I come back from china after a brief trip, just thought shall briefly post a follow up post to domain blocking in china. In this visit as well, I could not get past through the the great firewall of china. Blogger domain is blocked within china. Do not understimate the ability of chinese to control the net. Bruce Einhorn of Businessweek rightly points out that china would not have succeeded in censoring the net without the support and cooperation of foreign IT companies. As he sees it, this is the inescapable truth & this problem that has to be addressed. He adds that even if Yahoo is not there, they will have something else. If Google is not there, they will have something else. What is objectionable is the stonewalling that companies do. They don't take any responsibility, admit that there are certain grey areas and that their technology can be used for repression, or mitigate this. I tend to agree with the view that the fact is that foreign IT suppliers and companies are willingly, knowingly assisting the chinese police in suppressing political dissent. As we noted earlier,the chinese government promises broad and profound social reform over the next 15 years as China seeks to boost innovation and promises that the country will improve laws, regulations and government plans so they are more conducive to innovation. This is perhaps the time for western nations to make things change in the chinese mindset. But make no mistake about it- china is clearly poised for more and more growth and prosperity – it is indeed impressive that china has been able to pull millions and millions of people out of poverty and build infrastructure that would put many western cities to shame.