Just Because You’re Paranoid …
February 17th, 2010
After witnessing the synergy between people power and media technologies in Iran, China’s leadership has been especially leary of the same sort of upset happening to their rule. The more militarily-minded are especially concerned about frontal assaults on their internet security. The Communist Party’s Global Times wrote in December last year that an unsuspecting government worker opened an email that let loose a worm that sucked away information specific to a submarine program.
The New York Times reports that for the last two years the Chinese national government has been investing more heavily in local hardware and software. The article notes that the effort is somewhat contradictory (this is China, after all), in that the state-of-the art equipment and programs come from the West, while China’s are very much still a work in promise (recall Green Dam blocking software, which was riddled by security holes).
In addition to wanting to control the content Chinese users receive, the leadership also wants to make sure that the next generation infrastructure and protocols allow them to keep their committee-finger on the button. In other words, if they feel they need to completely shut down China’s internet in, for instance, time of war or extreme social discontent, they will be able to as effectively as they had Xinjiang last summer.
Western businesses invested in China should be sure they have frequent back-ups of their financial and operational data to their home countries, lest the PRC decide international business be damned, political survival takes precedence. The economic testosterone coursing through arthritic arteries in Beijing believing it can go it alone, if it must.
But then again, just because they’re paranoid, doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get them.
Past posts:
The Internet Opens Up to the World
When Big Brother Might Be Your Own Brother
How to be picked up by a Techno-chik in China
