This kind of uncertainty (will the government suddenly decide that my product is unworthy?) and lack of protection (copycat products will instantly abound) seems like it greatly discourages foreign investment in China. But...do they need it? China seems content for the moment to simply copy everything else the world does and create a China-only version of it. They have a large enough population that they don't really need anyone else.
Every time I think about what a great, untapped market China is, I'm reminded of what they did to World of Warcraft when it entered there:
You said it, it's a huge untapped market, and if you want a piece of it you are going to abide by the rules imposed by the rule makers there. Just as in everywhere else.
That's a false equivalence, though. China's "rules" are much worse than most of the "everywhere else"s. Thus, they will continue to have trouble attracting foreign investment.
Though it would appear easier most "everywhere else" to voice dissent regarding "the rules". That and the prospect of redressing such grievances seem to be important distinctions.
let's see what's happening in china. a huge team merely for content censoring is required if your website ever displays any user inputed text. that's why china's twitter copycat companies have to employ several hundreds people(while twitter has 2-digits employees), and quite often make their entire designing / marketing department join the censoring team temporarily.
update on the numbers, i just searched google and found that sina weibo recruited 1000+ people in march 2011. i was being a little bit too conservative in the first place. cant really estimate how many they've employed since then.
With every next paradigm it seems the content creation gets easier, and the volume is higher. We had blogs, web 2.0 sites, social media sites, and each time the volume increased. I don't think it's sustainable for them to keep this up for decades.
Actually, the argument from the reactionaries in the article is very much aware that it's hard to go back and add censorship after services launch. Their argument is that before allowing any services to launch, censorship tools and suppression capabilities need to be already in place.
Every time I think about what a great, untapped market China is, I'm reminded of what they did to World of Warcraft when it entered there:
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-07-29/20090729175936714...