China Paranoia Part 2

Article: Who Lost China’s Internet?

The question raised by this article is not whether China will ever become “free.” The interesting question is : does government control business? or does business control government?

Communist China realizes Lawrence Lessig?s ?control by architecture.? I am still halfway through the book, Code , but another fundamental question is whether any system architecture is impossible to circumvent. Perhaps communist China can evolve into a peaceful nonthreatening entity, but it?s hard to believe that the political temperature is not going to increase as its economic development increases. The question of the 21st century seems to be ?India or China?? With China, you have strict political control (with some degree of egalitarianism) and unrelenting dedication to economic development. With India, you have enormous class differences, economic disarray, but total political freedom. So who will win? It is not a zero sum game, surely, but the question is more than an academic one. It determines whether freedoms have utility in our society or whether they should be sought as ends in themselves.