Google predicts the end of China's great firewall.
In an interview with Josh Rogin, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt decried China's web censorship:
"I believe that ultimately censorship fails," said Schmidt, when asked about whether the Chinese government's censorship of the Internet can be sustained. "China's the only government that's engaged in active, dynamic censorship. They're not shy about it."
When the Chinese Internet censorship regime fails, the penetration of information throughout China will also cause political and social liberalization that will fundamentally change the nature of the Chinese government's relationship to its citizenry, Schmidt believes.
"I personally believe that you cannot build a modern knowledge society with that kind of behavior, that is my opinion," he said. "I think most people at Google would agree with that. The natural next question is when [will China change], and no one knows the answer to that question. [But] in a long enough time period, do I think that this kind of regime approach will end? I think absolutely."
Interestingly, in March Reuters reported that China's innovation sector was surging:
International filings for patent protection, a key indicator of technological innovation in major economies, hit an all-time record last year driven by growth in China and other middle- income countries, a United Nations agency said on Monday.The World Intellectual Property Organization, which administers the global patent pact, reported that 2011 saw a 10 percent rise in applications to a total of 181,900...
WIPO figures showed the United States, Japan and Germany, the long-time leaders in total applications, accounted between them for 58 per cent of total filings, but China, with a rise of 33.4 per cent on the previous year, was pushing them hard.
Patents in and of themselves don't tell you all there is to know about the long-term dynamism of a country's tech sector. But in 2012, the lack of freedom doesn't appear to be slowing China's technological edge (although given the rampant intellectual property theft it's difficult to judge just how much indigenous innovation is actually occurring).
(AP Photo)
