China

Duncan Hewitt: Will Money and Internet Users Crush China’s Great Firewall?

Duncan Hewitt, veteran China correspondent and best-selling author of Getting Rich First, thinks that money and angry people will play a growing role in the battle against China’s Great Firewall.

1- Money
So many people have invested so much money into the Chinese Internet that commercial interests will begin battling political controls. The recent battle to keep video sharing platform furor over the closure of YouTube clone Tudou.com open is one example. Another example is how the newswires are challenging the Chinese government in the WTO because all financial information must be delivered through state-controlled Xinhua News Agency.

2- Angry People
The Internet has become so much a part of young peoples’ lives that they get furious when it is blocked. Also, individuals have brought lawsuits against Internet companies when their sites are taken down. While there have been individual cases of publications suing over censorship in the past, it was usually dissident types from the fringes of society. The individuals suing the Internet companies are more ordinary people angered by bad service. This echoes a point I made in an earlier posting about how the Edison Chen scandal showed that people take Internet censorship much more personally than publication censorship.

Further point raised by Duncan: Does Beijing think it can control what people think while allowing them access to a lot of information?

Note: Duncan’s video explanation is much more nuanced and eloquent than this headline or summary.

Technorati Tags: China, Duncan Hewitt, Getting Rich First, Great Firewall, Tudou

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