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from the keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer dept.
The New York Times has an article about China's online censorship factories and how they operate. Censors are specially educated accurately in history and politics so that they have mastery over how to spot and eliminate references, even indirect ones, to forbidden topics. Potential employees for censorship factories have to cram for two weeks for a comprehensive exam which they must pass in order to begin work. This education is followed by ongoing training which includes regularly visiting and reviewing web sites normally blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
Li Chengzhi had a lot to learn when he first got a job as a professional censor.
Like many young people in China, the 24-year-old recent college graduate knew little about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He had never heard of China’s most famous dissident, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in custody two years ago.
Now, after training, he knows what to look for — and what to block. He spends his hours scanning online content on behalf of Chinese media companies looking for anything that will provoke the government’s wrath. He knows how to spot code words that obliquely refer to Chinese leaders and scandals, or the memes that touch on subjects the Chinese government doesn’t want people to read about.
Previously:
Censorship a Trojan Horse (2018)
Unpublished Chinese Censorship Document Reveals Effort to Eradicate Online Political Content (2018)
The "Great Cannon" of China (2015)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @03:56PM (14 children)
Hmm... the "good" they are doing in manufacturing?
I see rampant destruction of the environment and poisoning of people.
As fir goods produced, I see shoddy products that are dangerous, fraudulent, and break after first use.
I'm sure someone will tell me, "But look at the iPhone, they can make quality goods!" which is really an argument about the exception more than the general case. Oh, the mountains of trash that result from shoddy products. But I will give you this: they can make CHEAP stuff, which if you are a business that sells to consumers so you don't care if it breaks (all the better!), you like. Bigger profits for you. Maybe a net drag on others.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Monday January 07 2019, @04:16PM (2 children)
> I see shoddy products
The quality of any products is as good as the QA process that vets it. Which is (should be) owned by the company that commissioned the product, i.e. the Western design/engineering outfits like Apple, etc.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:11AM (1 child)
THIS
I have been involved in manufacturing in China, the thing that Americans don't necessarily understand at first is that they view QA as 100% your responsibility, almost as if they are mandated to cut every corner that they can. Of course this cuts both ways, if you lock your spec and QA down super tight you will find that you don't get your pricing where you need it anymore, and deadlines start slipping. There is a temptation to say they have no pride in their work or they make shoddy products, but it really is more nuanced than that. Fantastic products are made in China, and you can have a device made by the likes of Foxconn very economically, but if you expect Apple build quality just because it is the same OEM, you are in for a ride.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 08 2019, @10:11AM
Nb: This is my experience everywhere - not just china. If you don't test it, it doesn't work (I am mostly a software guy).
(Score: 3, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 07 2019, @04:18PM (8 children)
True - but - let's be fair. I don't like making excuses for either the Chinese, or their government, but honesty forces us to consider a few things.
Right here in the US, industrialization destroyed a helluva lot of the environment. Love Canal for one, the burning river in Chicago, and at least a couple dozen other Superfund sites. There were hundreds of other sites that were terrible, but didn't qualify for Superfund. Bootstrapping an industrial nation isn't easy, and there will be a lot of screwups along the way. To give credit where credit is due, I think it has taken China less time to address the problems of pollution, than it took the United States.
Next - there was a lot of shitty manufacturing going on, here in the US, and everywhere else in their early days of industry. I hold out Japan as an example. When I was a small child, "Made in Japan" was synonymous with "junk". No one wanted the stuff. Japan countered Americans refusing to buy anything made in Japan by founding a village or town, called "USA". So, the bauble said "Made in USA", and Americans bought it. Today? Japan is known for it's high quality automobiles, among other things. The US in it's best days never equalled Japanese quality control in the auto industry.
China is gaining the education, experience, and knowhow that we had 70 or 80 years ago. They will get there.
Unfortunately, we here in the US are sliding backward. We no longer have the millions of steelworkers and autoworkers who supplied the world with much of it's automotive needs. Yeah, we still have a cadre who might train the next generation - but it isn't really clear that the next generation is going to do that kind of work.
China is also cracking down on the kind of corruption that lead to poisoned milk products. I don't trust them yet, but we do know that they are addressing the problem.
Remember, the Chinese were nothing more than a fourth world possession of various nations over the past couple centuries. They were held back somewhere between the 12th and 15th centuries, for the profit of England, and then various other Euro nations, and then Japan, and finally Russia. It takes time to move into the age of industry.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Monday January 07 2019, @04:55PM (6 children)
Note that China has barely started to address the problems of their pollution. Meanwhile, a significant part of the US's pollution problem on the West Coast comes straight over from China. I'd wait on giving that credit. Same goes for most of that list. China has done some remarkable stuff, but so have most countries of the world, including the US.
They got that way by growing complacent. In the 15th century, China was the most powerful and advanced country in the world. Odds are good that they'll be in that position again by the end of this century. But the lesson of those in-between centuries is that one can't expect the world to stop for them.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:17AM (5 children)
Odds are, by 2030.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:20PM (4 children)
No way. They'll probably be close to or just past having leading GDP by then. But they'll still have some catch up to do to get to the technology and standard of living of the rest of the developed world. 2050 would be the earliest I'd put forth unless the rest of the developed world screws up massively somehow.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday January 10 2019, @01:46AM (3 children)
Standard of living, yes, it'll take some more time. As per technology, financial and military power, and overall leadership, 10 more years will do it, I think. Unless there is a war.
We should expect Japan's level per capita in similar to Japan's time frame. And let's not forget that the rest of the region will move forward even faster. It'd be a miracle if the US still has hegemony position in 10 years.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:26AM (2 children)
They're not that close. Plus, I think there's at least one huge economic correction in China's future like what happened to the Japanese in 1990. Move wrong on that and they might be indefinitely behind the developed world.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday January 10 2019, @04:16AM (1 child)
Well, my bet is that in 10 years we will have 1990 Japan adjusted for the population size of China. This should be more than enough to make it the leader.
I'd agree with you if a serious recession is to happen now - withing 2-3 years - but it got to be a Chinese only recession and a long deep one at that, which is not very likely. Japan got their lost decades only after they achieved comparable living standard.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 11 2019, @05:14AM
They're not that close and they have a huge number of rural people that they need to deal with. And keep in mind that neither the US or EU are standing still for them.
While that's quite possible, it's not the only time that such a recession can cripple China. The lesson of Japan is not that recessions can hurt, but rather that the response to recessions can cripple for decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @10:30PM
Love Canal was the government's fault; forcing a private company to sell them the land, then violating the proviso that they didn't build on it. And you might want to look in to how many of those Superfund sites are EPA labs...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:14AM
I'm sure someone will tell me, "But look at the iPhone, they can make quality goods!" which is really an argument about the exception more than the general case."
No, it's actually a bit more than that.
It's about supply and demand.
They *can* produce relatively high quality product - we know because they do.
Yet they produce mostly junk. Why? Are there just a few good factories, and most are incapable?
No, that doesn't seem to be the case. The same company, even the very same factory, that's putting out an award winning product for someone else will often simultaneously produce and sell shoddy trash under their own name!
What's happening here is a little more subtle. This is the result of Chinese companies applying axioms they often learned in the US getting their MBAs. They will produce the product as inexpensively *as possible.* They will cut every corner they can - and only if they can't sell the product at a profit will they think there is any need to change what they are doing.
Apple learned from the first few failures and wrote their requirements into subsequent contracts very carefully, very thoroughly, with very serious financial consequences. If iphones are failing QA it costs the manufacturer money, and as soon as that was the case, they started producing phones that passed QA. They're still cutting every possible corner to reduce costs - but a bunch of those corners have now been defined as 'impossible' because of the way the contracts work.
On the other hand, when they put out their own product, it may be a very similar design, made by the same people, using the same machines, mostly from the same parts - but they know this one does not fall under Apples contract, so they cut more corners to bring the cost down lower. And if the resulting product fails to impress the buyer, oh well. They aren't going to be able to impose financial penalties like Apple can, so it doesn't matter.
Chinese brands are typically just as you say. Even patriotic Chinese people avoid them for the most part, and buy something with a foreign name on it (still made in China!) as long as they can afford to do so. So the key denominator for junk here doesn't appear to be Chinese origin, but Chinese *branding.* It's sort of a self-perpetuating assumption that when a Chinese company makes something of quality they put a foreign brand name on it (either by contract or simply by counterfeiting!,) so Chinese brands can be very low end.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:37PM
It's a big enough exception to prove the general case wrong. It's not a few people who happen to be obsessed with quality, but a huge supply chain. And really, pay attention to Arik's reply [soylentnews.org]. You could learn something, if you're not careful.
You might want to think about why most of the developed world has lost its ability to make cheap stuff.