In order to restrict access to and distribution of content on the internet, the Chinese government is not morally justified in demanding that private enterprises adhere to certain requirements. Chinese technology officials have met innumerable times in recent months with representatives of Facebook and other private companies to discuss the possibility of repurposing their services in China. Facebook must, however, ostensibly abide by China's stringent internet regulations in order to conduct business there. The three articles cited in this paper state that the main issue with the Chinese rules is that they have an unreasonable hidden agenda. China has tried to prove that private entities' preferred option was to follow laid guidelines by finding a local internet companies or investor. However looking keenly at the proposed partnership, one can easily sense a foul move by China. Potentially, finding a partner would allow the local company have the majority stake. And since the local company is under China's internet regulations, the government techs can easily infiltrate the system whenever they desire. The Chinese government would assume the burden of surveillance thus leaving Facebook and other private operators a hard task of sharing information efficiently. Facebook recently unveiled an attempt to partner with China as it ventures back into its population. A censorship tool to be only used in China could seal the deal. The move would work for the Chinese government as the deal will lead to content suppression originating from other countries. The birth of fake-news menace that other countries seem to experience can be a tool used by the Chinese government (Isaac 3). They use it to target their political rivals by shutting down social media sites praising their opponents.
While China pushes the private companies within China to meet their criteria for limiting the access and distribution of content on the internet, one would think of a definite motive. On the contrary, unlocking the billions of users in respect to revenue for private entities such as Facebook could be used by the government to monitor and breach human rights acts (Constine 1). By giving China the liberty to track its local users protesting or bad-mouthing the regime, persecution could be the order of the day. Such hard stances are currently attributed to the Facebook staffs quitting their jobs as reported by The New York Times. To identify the lengths of precaution taken by individual fearing the government, we look at Xiaomi, the lady who acted boldly. An invitation by the Chinese police for a cup of tea would lead to the individuals invited taken to prison. According to Xiaomi, these are among the unjustified actions carried out by the Chinese government (Talbot 134). She goes an extra mile to hide her anonymity to mitigate her bumping to the tech regulating authorities. Whenever she wants to access some documents restricted by the government, she uses encrypted Gmail account hosted in another country. Such technologies advantages make her internet address appear to originate from country hosting the servers. Lastly, the justifications by the China government can be revealed further by an incident that occurred on the 60th-anniversary celebration of China's National Day; massive immorality was carried out by the Chinese government. The government went to greater lengths of unplugging a network server hosting the Urumqi region. The government intended to hide the violent protests that had occurred after the killings of immigrant workers (Talbot 135). Therefore, there are reasons to justify the mischief behind China's move in internet censorship.
Works Cited
Constine, Josh. "Facebook built censorship tool to get into China despite human rights risks." 22 November 2016. TechCrunch. 9 November 2017.
Isaac, Mike. "Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into China." 22 November 2016. The New York Times. 9 November 2017.
Talbot, David. "China's Internet Paradox." Technology review (2010): 134-138.
