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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Unpublished Chinese Censorship Document Reveals Effort to Eradicate Online Political Content (2018)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: 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?