Comment by tnt128
4 days ago
China didn’t ban U.S. apps. it maintains a policy that sets a high bar for foreign operators, such as requiring domestic servers, domestic partners legally responsible for operations, content access and moderation to meet local standards, etc.
U.S. apps and websites simply choose not to operate there due to these requirements.
The U.S. has been complaining about this for years, advocating for a free internet without censorship in the Chinese market. But now that Chinese apps have access to American data, we’ve begun implementing the same measures.
I can get to the main Xinhua news website -- the Chinese one, not some US-specific page -- easily enough as an American. You definitely can't do the equivalent from within China, you can't get to Voice of America, or the New York Times, or similar sites.
That's the difference. It's not about operating as a business within the country, it's about banning access to even the foreign version of the site or app.
China commonly bans Western websites and apps, even ones that have never operated or attempted to operate as businesses within China. The US doing the same is relatively rare, situations like this TikTok ban are very uncommon.
> content access and moderation to meet local standards
what a nice way to say forcing a backdoor to identify, spy on, and oppress citizens.
but yeah I guess oppression of people is a "high bar" for foreign operators to meet.
backdoors are wrong here and are wrong there.
We can't have people doing things like searching for Tiananman Square or Mao Zedong or talking about how Taiwan and Hong Kong want complete independence from China.
I'm sure a big part of the cost is the additional infrastructure and manpower to implement all of China's censorship, tracking, etc.
Ah, more misinformation from the PRC defense squad, right on time!
> China didn’t ban U.S. apps.
Yes, it did.
It's not just that the websites and apps don't operate as normal businesses within China, but you can't even reach the foreign versions from within China without using a VPN. That's what makes them truly banned.
There are plenty of Chinese websites who do not operate as businesses within the US, but Americans can still freely access the sites if they want to, thus they're not banned.
Please, read this and educate yourself about China's firewall: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...