Interesting… Shanghai already has a reputation for being quite liberal, elitist and a tad west worshipping. This certainly is going to make it worse.
Remember the “white paper” protests during covid? We can probably expect a few more of those public displays, but not at the same violent levels as HK.
Let’s not generalize. If allowing foreign media could weaken a nation, then Vietnam, Cuba, Laos (countries that are smaller and weaker than China) wouldn’t have survived.
Unlike in the past, the Chinese people (not just the government) are very experienced now, they have seen and known all the tricks the Imperialists use to overthrow a government. They wouldn’t fall for it.
On the other hands, we have seen the effect of American people mass migrating to RedNOTE and saw the US propaganda about China being dispelled in real time. The Chinese government probably saw it as well, and they probably think that it’s time for China to expand its influence.
Many Western liberals believe that if the “CCP” didn’t erect the Great Firewall, their government would have fallen. I tell them: “You are fucking naive. The Great Firewall doesn’t keep the Chinese people from reaching your truth, it allows you to freely hate, bully, and talk shit about China without backlash”.
It’s not just the impact the Chinese had on Americans on rednote. There was a massive number of Chinese liberals having their beliefs that America was actually great because of capitalism and that their government was lieing to them to spread socialist propaganda. I saw several comments along the lines of “how can it be this bad? Our government was telling the truth?”
I think it shattered the idea that capitalism was good in any way for a lot of Chinese users. I think once the wall comes down and the see the hate and control the western media has for China and the truth of life under capitalism it’s gonna be a wake up call.
I hope the national government puts a stop to this
US building of internet firewall against China intensifies
On the other hand:
This would also give residents the freedom to use popular social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, contributing to Shanghai’s growth as a global economic hub.
Why. Why. Why would you allow these of all things? They should have to abide by Chinese law, operate from Chinese servers, censor according to Chinese government regulations, etc. All of which in the past they’ve refused. Besides that they’re all brainrotting garbage by design.
It does make me wonder though. Someone mused about China striking a deal with Trump, they’d allow in US social media companies in exchange for the US allowing Tiktok. It’s the one thing that might placate Zuck and Musk. But it’s very risky.
Absolutely on par with the risk they incurred in allowing all the liberalization and foreign capital penetration. That corruption very nearly succeeded in growing to the heights necessary to risk the party’s rule and state security. So let us hope it’s a carefully thought through decision rather than a hasty trade made for the expediency of keeping the door open. Opportunities for reaching the west but also risks.
Put another way, if the west themselves don’t slam the door shut on Chinese internet users and Americans interacting within 5 years it’s because of one of two things: 1) They’ve somehow accepted defeat and/or been entirely bought off or much more likely 2) They have the upper hand in the deal and are setting up spy rings, terrorist rings, and theft of technology rings at such a pace that they think they’ll be ahead to leave it open longer. In other words China should be very suspicious if the US doesn’t in the near future move to cut this all off and slam down a firewall. I do hope the American people see too much before that happens and that maybe yet we might live to see class consciousness and something better within the next 30 years.
A Glasnost shill like the 20th century history-ignorant “Party” members in Shanghai who apparently proposed this slop don’t understand anything beyond liberal idealism. This would be a complete negation of everything China has done in resisting Meta/Google/Twitter since the late 2000s. What this Gorbachevite (I’m being generous here because at least Gorbachev was forced to frame his rhetoric under a Marxist veneer) is proposing is an outright surrender to the Western internet oligopoly and not even trying to negotiate concessions but a straight up unilateralist.
The reason why the entire TikTok ban circus even occurred is that while the West talks about freedom of speech in words; in deeds, they are totalitarian in their obsession of seeking to enforce total information and narrative control across internet space. This lib is either cluelessly naive, having drunk from a spiked punch bowl that the West itself refuses to touch, or a Yakolev style comprador-in-waiting. Given all the liberal dogwhistling in this article on how this proposal is being framed: “learning from developed countries”; “give residents the freedom”; “restoring international internet access”; “helping Shanghai align with international norms”; this may be a straight up anti-communist freak given how he skirts around the reasons why the Party initiated these GFW policies in the first place.
On the other hand, justifying like this as because “openness has become the norm today,” while the US itself is simultaneously trying to ban and forcibly divest Chinese social media platforms at the same time is hilariously out of touch and this might just be a skyscraper-dwelling moron whose feet haven’t touched ground level in a half a decade.
Not to mention, the focus on western products like ChatGPT, whose training data is heavily anticommunist and probably somewhat sinophobic, too. Facebook and it’s subsidiaries (fuck you Zuck, I’m not calling it M***) are full of anti China anti communist etc bullshit. This screams like someone who assumes that the west will engage in actual good faith exchange of products and services. I really hope Beijing puts the brakes on this and fast!
Someone mused about China striking a deal with Trump, they’d allow in US social media companies in exchange for the US allowing Tiktok.
I doubt the Chinese state cares about TikTok’s fate w/r/t the US. Despite what the US government and US media say, I think it’s pretty much not their circus, not their monkeys.
US gained some control of TikTok after it went back online for Americans (people getting banned for saying free Palestine) so I don’t understand why China needs to give further concessions
