China Blocks WhatsApp
What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g. Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but it happens a lot more often since there are a lot more opportunities to share ideas with much fewer restrictions.The end result is that China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revertThe people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. This is already true, but its importance will grow as China's censorship grows.The more China closes up, the less Western companies have to fear about future tech dominance or crazy innovation from China in the long runTo be fair, things may even out since Western governments seem to be doing all they can to copy China's censorship and gov control. SOPA, PIPA, SESTA, and the Digital Economy Bill come to mind. I'm sure others can add more to the list.