Chinese courts have signed into law an agreement that will make it more difficult for companies to house data on servers inside the country. The data that is housed in the country must now be censored even though the company may not be in China. This changes the landscape of freedom of speech on the internet. Since China is the biggest internet market in the world with over 700 million users (double the population of the United States) it could have serious implications on censorship throughout the world. State run press in the country states that this censorship will help with fraud in the country. Hopefully companies doing business in China can find elsewhere to house their data to avoid censorship of the internet.
Article: https://www.cnet.com/news/chinas-new-cyberlaws-have-many-scared/
Vaibhav Shukla says
Really a different news I just read last week that russia will be banning linkedin as it wants it datacenter to be located in russia rather than USA
.But this seems strange that companies have to find elsewhere to house their data to avoid censorship of the internet.
Jason A Lindsley says
Well at least China’s “state-run press agency” thinks this is a good idea. Of course they publish that these laws will protect the information of Chinese internet users and reduce fraud.
Mengxue Ni says
In China, we can’t access Google, Instagram. But I know many people use VPN to get on Instagram. I don’t like this policy at all. It restricts a lot of internet information. If they only restrict unwanted information, I think it should be fine. However, they restricted Google and Instagram for no reasons. According to this article, some organizations can be affected by this policy now. I don’t know if this censorship has benefits outweigh harms.
Vaibhav Shukla says
I wasnt aware that even google was banned in china as I know about facebook but Yes rightly mentioned banning sites like google could be causing more of harm than benefits.It restricts a lot of information.
Eventually there is no benefit if the users are able to access them through VPN .
Wayne Wilson says
China’s government is trying to control every aspect of internet access, they pretty much want access to all data that citizens can obtain. I’m sure this will effect long term relationships with many companies currently doing business with China.
Mauchel Barthelemy says
This is one of the reasons Google removed itself from doing business in China. China has a lot of great tech companies, but this type of policies will slow down innovation. Is it also required that companies doing business in China must store Chinese citizen’s information there? I know this law do or will exist in Europe. E.U. was discussion to enact a law that will require all tech companies doing business in that region to store Europeans’ data there only, but not censoring them.