China Clamps Down On Web, Pinching Companies Like Google

Submitted By Aki7788
Words: 683
Pages: 3

The article “China Clamps Down on Web, Pinching Companies Like Google” from New York Times addresses three concerns about China blocking foreign internet services. The first part of the article addresses the difficulties of search engines and message service companies to do business in China, due to China blocking search engines like Google. The second part of the article discusses how the Chinese web businesses cannot substitute the multinational internet services. The last part of the article brings to light how blocking all these foreign internet services makes communication with people in China extremely difficult and inconvenient, and is like degrading to an age of low technology. Nowadays, it is very popular for companies or groups to use cloud technology like Google Drive and Google Calendar to set up meetings and share files with members and employees; and using Facebook and Twitter to share news and send messages. However, China has blocked such internet services by using the Great Firewall.
Blocking search engines like Google makes it more difficult for companies to work with each other. This leads to providing a lower technology work environment for businesses or researchers in China. Companies cannot use cloud technology to share ideas and information and need to find other ways to send messages. Precious time is spent on looking for ways to send message a instead of actually doing business, which in turn causes lower productivity and may also add cost.
Even though China has developed and produced many successful internet services, they cannot replace the web services provided by other countries. For example, the Chinese search engine Baidu poorly supports searching information using English or non-Chinese languages; therefore, making it difficult to obtain information from other countries. In contrast, a search engine like Google supports searching with many different languages and provide lots of un-filtered information which Chinese search engines cannot provide.
China has also blocked some foreign academic sites. According to the article by Bradsher and Mozur (2014), one archaeologist in Beijing mentions that “it’s hard to find others work and hard to inform others the latest findings”. Users are denied access to these websites when using Chinese search engines or simply when using the internet in China, so the information desired is not available and technically does not exist in China. Since people in China can only use Chinese search engines, they do not have the freedom of choice-making. Chinese authorities should give more choices to the society, better technology and more innovation.
In the situation of China, blocking foreign internet services makes people in China have fewer choices. While other countries are using Facebook and Twitter to share news, Google to search for