Chinese generation grows up with censored Internet

A generation of Chinese is coming of age with an Internet that is distinctively different from the rest of the Web. Over the past decade, China has blocked Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as thousands of other foreign websites, including The New York Times and Chinese Wikipedia. A plethora of Chinese websites emerged to serve the same functions -- though they came with a heavy dose of censorship.

Now the implications of growing up with this different Internet system are starting to play out. Many young people in China have little idea what Google, Twitter or Facebook are, creating a gulf with the rest of the world. And, accustomed to the homegrown apps and online services, many appear uninterested in knowing what has been censored online.

These trends are set to spread. China is now exporting its model of a censored Internet to other countries, including Vietnam, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

Such outcomes are the opposite of what many in the West anticipated would be the effect of the Internet. In a 2000 speech, President Bill Clinton argued that the Internet's growth would make China a more open society like the United States. "In the new century, liberty will spread by cellphone and cable modem," he said.

For U.S. and other Western Internet giants, the hope of getting a piece of the huge China market is increasingly a pipe dream. China's Communist Party has demonstrated clearly that it will walk down a path of tighter ideological control under President Xi Jinping. In the first half of this year, the Internet regulator Cyber Administration of China said it had shut down or revoked the licenses of more than 3,000 websites.

Yet U.S. Internet giants are still trying. Google has been working on a censored search engine for China's smartphone users in case the government lets it in. And last month, Facebook gained approval to open a subsidiary in the eastern province of Zhejiang -- only to see the approval quickly withdrawn.

Even if the Western apps and sites make it into China, they may face apathy from young people.

Two economists from Peking University and Stanford University concluded this year, after an 18-month survey, that Chinese college students were indifferent about having access to uncensored, politically sensitive information. They had given nearly 1,000 students at two Beijing universities free tools to bypass censorship, but found that nearly half the students did not use them. Among those who did, almost none spent time browsing foreign news websites that were blocked.

"Our findings suggest that censorship in China is effective not only because the regime makes it difficult to access sensitive information, but also because it fosters an environment in which citizens do not demand such information in the first place," the scholars wrote.

Zhang Yeqiong, 23, a customer service representative at an e-commerce company in Xinji, a small city a few hours' drive from Beijing, echoed that sentiment. "I grew up with Baidu, so I'm used to it," she said, referring to China's dominant search engine.

The attitude is a departure even from those born in China in the 1980s. When that generation was coming of age a decade or so ago, some were rebels. One of the most famous was Han Han, a blogger who questioned the Chinese political system and traditional values. He sold millions of copies of books and has more than 40 million followers on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Now there are no Chinese like Han who are in their teens or 20s. Even Han, now 35, is no longer his former self. He mainly posts about his businesses on Weibo, which include making films and race cars.

Many young people in China instead consume apps and services like Baidu, the social media service WeChat and the short-video platform Tik Tok. Often, they spout consumerism and nationalism.

In March, when social media giant Tencent surveyed more than 10,000 users who were born in 2000 or after, nearly 8 in 10 said they thought China was either in its best time in history or was becoming a better country each day. Nearly the same percentage said they were very optimistic or quite optimistic about their future.

When young Chinese spend time abroad, many have to learn an entirely different Internet ecosystem. That happened to Perry Fang, 23, who moved two years ago from Guangzhou in southern China to study marketing in Sydney, Australia. In Sydney, he learned a whole new set of websites, including Google, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat.

Now when he returns to China to visit his family for holidays, Fang said, it is hard not to be able to use Google. He has also learned not to check sensitive political news in front of his parents, who have scolded him for doing so.

"The Chinese apps become useless as soon as you move abroad," he said. But with Google and others, "whichever country you go to, you can still use these apps," he added. "The return on investment is very high."

Business on 08/07/2018

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