The Great “Fire Wall” of China: A Trade Barrier of the Electronic Kind: China Internet Censorship Continues

400 million internet users in China! Surely this number will increase and therefore be an almost certain marketing segment for US and other advanced online marketers to try and tap. But do those Chinese internet users get to really experience the “world wide web” as most other “open societies” do?  According to the latest BusinessWeek article on this subject, they do not.

Having the trading clout China currently possesses, this is certainly a dilemma that will pose a problem for US companies such as Facebook and Twitter when their plans to add more members is blocked by the “Great Fire Wall of China”.

The problem I see is again a double standard… US companies are not allowed to compete for potential customers in China and other closed  markets because those governments censor internet content while they allow their own similar online companies to flourish with no competition from Western Markets.  Just because we are not exporting Rice or other durable goods to these markets doesn’t mean that a Facebook account that is content rich shouldn’t be afforded the same trade status.

A double standard that has vast implications on how a social network is created….

I hope that China’s Wall Street supported social network companies  being created with Government sponsorship, (read Communistic overtones),  behind the Great Fire Wall will not be unleashed on the rest of the world without a clear understanding of what agenda these companies have…     -jdognet