Why some social networks still aren’t blocked in China

Image credit: Tech in Asia.

This week, another one bit the dust in China. Medium has been blocked throughout the country a few days after announcing plans to expand from being a simple blogging platform and developing relationships with major American news publishers.

The number of foreign-hosted social media networks accessible in mainland China has dwindled to a meager handful, proving that the country’s dead-last ranking on Freedom House’s Freedom on Net report is well deserved.

But a small number of international social networks have managed to escape the banhammer – so far. How come?

Cut a deal

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner describes his decision to enter China – which required the network to censor the content of its Chinese users – as “gut-wrenching.” But business concerns trumped the comfort of Weiner’s guts, and the company went through with it.

LinkedIn’s China operations resemble what Google used to do in the nation. When the search engine first entered China in 2006, it also agreed to self-censor the content on its servers to ensure that they followed “Chinese regulations” – namely, the regulations that ban certain types of political speech. Google’s decision collapsed under its own weight in 2010, as Chinese government requests and hacking became too much.

These deals almost always require a Chinese partner. For LinkedIn, that was China Broadband Capital (which also helped Evernote enter China) and a China affiliate of Sequoia Capital, according to the New York Times.

Even if an app is uncensored, that doesn’t mean it’s usable in China.

Microsoft-owned Skype has a Chinese buddy in the form of Shiguangpu Information Technology, which is in charge of operating Skype in the mainland. Try to visit Skype.com in China and you’ll be re-routed to http://skype.gmw.cn/, which Shiguangpu IT’s affiliate Guangming Founder runs, where you can download “a modified version [of the app] that follows Chinese regulations.”

These deals are complicated, expensive, and – depending on the constitution of your guts – too morally compromising for companies that have strong feelings about freedom of speech. But there is an argument to be had that being in China – even if there are a million strings attached – is preferable to not entering the country at all.

These deals are often the only way to access the mainland and to operate 100 percent legally – although, as Google’s experience shows, they’re hardly iron-clad.

Stay small

If a social network is small enough – or large globally, but with a small user base in China – then it may be able to slip past censors unnoticed.

Quora, for example, is still accessible in China despite the fact that it hosts some articles that feature pretty intense scrutiny of the country’s politics and history. But the website’s content is overwhelmingly English-language and – while it is fairly popular among certain swaths of urban Chinese citizens with good English skills – it’s hardly a household name.

A fun fact: the top answer on “Will China Eventually Ban Quora?” is an emphatic “yes,” and has been for more than two years.

Steer clear of politics

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