Stone Walls and Firewall: China always limits its Citizens Interaction with Outside World

• Published Month : Wednesday, 04 Mar 2020 07:00 pm

China has always been limiting its people’s interaction with other nations by building walls may it be stone wall or the “Great Firewall.” Alike their stone wall, the Great Firewall creates a barrier limiting any flow as well as exchange of information not only across the firewall but also within the firewall. Hence, due to the Chinese government’s virtual blockade, a country with almost 800 million online population cannot access Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Wikipedia as well as several foreign news websites, including BBC and Reuters in the name of national security.

Beijing’s cybersovereignty is actual sense hampering citizens’ right to information as well as freedom of expression. However, country has its own version of Google, Amazon & Facebook known as Baidu. Baidu is the technology giant in China like Alibaba & Renren.

Moreover, foreign technology giants operating in the country are forced to adopt practices often perceived as offensive elsewhere. For Instance, Apple Inc. had fought appeals through the government of United States for creating a backdoor into its password protected products was compelled to delete the apps and then create the local data centers according to Chinese government requirements.

On the other hand, the United States has banned Huawei, a Chinese smartphone giant on the grounds of national security. Also, this ban will restrict Huawei’s smartphones access to the Google’s ecosystem as well as apps that will have no impact to Chinese as those are already ban in China but will hinder company’s markets outside China.

Basically difference between both the instances seen is Huawei alike other Chinese companies was permitted for developing a mature business in the US using American technology and hence the business is at stake whereas American companies in China including Apple never had access to Chinese market at first place.

Thus, it wouldn’t be wrong saying that the Great Firewall is not only shrinking the business of Chinese companies but will also wince the critical thinking and freedom of expression in upcoming years. This barrier where the citizens have no access to outside world or even within have no opinion of their own owing to the lack of information. And a country like China that continuously discusses innovation needs to understand that access to information, critical thinking followed by the freedom of expression only can lead them towards being their people being innovative. Therefore, Chinese government must comprehend a balance between censoring and permitting the information mode in the country to achieve their economic development goals.

This is Part- II of our three-part series on countries using the exception of National Securities for their personel interests. Part-I can be read here and Part-III here.