Americans believe that China´s censorship at the internet is stifling creativity in the tech industry. Wrong, says tech commentator Kaiser Kuo who recently left internet giant Baidu as communication director to return on the US in the Washington Post.
The Washington Post:
Outsiders tend to know one thing about China’s Internet: It’s blocked – no Facebook, Twitter or Google. They imagine a country languishing behind a digital Iron Curtain, waiting, frozen in time, for the fall of the Web’s Berlin Wall.
The United States wants to believe that the scourge of censorship thwarts online innovation, but China is challenging the idea in ways that frighten and confound.
“There’s this strange belief that you can’t build a mobile app if you don’t know the truth about what happened in Tiananmen Square,” said Kaiser Kuo, who recently stepped down as head of international communications for Baidu, one of China’s leading tech companies, and hosts Sinica, a popular podcast. “Trouble is, it’s not true.”
The truth is that behind the Great Firewall – the system of censorship designed to block content that could challenge the Chinese Communist Party – China’s tech scene is flourishing in a parallel universe.
Kaiser Kuo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.
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