Censorship or Protectionism? Reassessing China’s Regulation of Internet Industry [pdf]
&gt;...it is foreseeable that the protectionism by Internet censorship will be abolished after Baidu, Youku, Sina Weibo, and Renren mature enough.<p>No, it really isn&#x27;t. This was an interesting read right up to this part of the conclusion, then they blew it.<p>Yes of course China&#x27;s strict censorship of foreign services creates an opportunity fir domestic rival services, but the censorship came first and takes primacy over commercial considerations both for internal services and external ones. The Chinese government sees pervasive control of society as a primary political objective and their grip on the domestic internet gives them that. Every firm of internet communication is scanned, filtered and traced. All the major message broadcast services, equivalents of e.g. Twitter and Facebook, are astroturfed with pro-government propaganda. This is not going to stop just so that a few Chinese internet companies might possibly have a Chance of making a bit of money overseas. To think that&#x27;s possible is astoundingly naive.<p>Anyway, why would they have to? They could just partition their foreign services to not include domestic filters.