Where Principle Meets Practical

We all want to believe we would stand up to an oppressive government that censors and blocks content from its own citizens, but there is a price to be paid for every step in the wrong direction.  The Chinese know, and follow that rule.

Apple pulled the New York Times app from its store in China [http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-pulls-new-york-times-app-from-china-store-1483576379].  The Chinese do not like the New York Times and neither do I, but we have completely different reasons.  The Chinese don't like the reporting on China that the Times does - and they have done some really good reports on some high-ranking officials, including the current Chaiman of the Communist Party - and they don't seem willing to allow that content to seep into their country.  We can all remember the first use of the Great Cannon was to silence readers of the New York Times website, provided in Chinese.  This powerful tool can help them identify who is reading it, block it, change the content, or a number of other things inclined to stop readers from ever doing it again.  They have largely succeeded.

Apple could continue to allow it but the Chinese have "asked them" to bar it.  The Wall Street Journal article also mentions an on-going investigation of Apple's failure to exclude "pornographic" material from its systems, something that led to Google getting out of China.  Neither Apple nor the Chinese government have mentioned this yet.  The definition of pornographic is loose enough that a Victoria Secret catalog would qualify.  In Google's case, the Chinese were intent upon getting them to stop distributing the material anywhere, not just in China.  This keeps Chinese citizens from seeing it, while keeping everyone else from seeing it too.  They must not have teenagers in China or they would be more understanding.

China wants to dominate content on the Internet in ways we still have yet to discover, and they will go to great lengths to do it.  They have already established fake domains for a number of different sites that lure in people and control them.  This is what happens when they establish their own Internet and enforce the policy of that Internet on the rest of their users - Chinese or not.  They are requiring their software companies to develop software that supplies information about users of it and sends that information back to China.  Included in that is the serial number of hard drives, the location of devices, the WiFi connections being used and in the neighborhood, and much more.  Were it not for the University of Toronto Citizen Lab, we would probably not know of any of that.  I would almost guess they are banned in China.

Apple is finding the cost of doing business in China adds up to more than dollars and profit margins.  It requires them to give up principles as well.