Why Google, Facebook, WhatsApp are banned in China?

Last month there was a report that the computers of a US Navy contractor were breached by Chinese hackers, who stole hundreds of gigabytes of information about secret projects. The stolen data amounted to 614 gigabytes.

The data was related to a project called Sea Dragon, a secret project that the Defense Department explained as a new “disruptive offensive capability” being integrated onto “an existing weapons system with an existing Navy platform.”

But have you ever heard the data of Chinese Intel being hacked or leaked by the outsiders? Rarest or the rare. Main reason for this is China never lets foreign IT giants to run its services in their nation.

Google, Facebook, WhatsApp: These IT giants are all strangers to the Chinese!

One might argue that China is censoring internet freedom by not letting its people use the services of Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, WhatsApp and many more globally renowned applications. But at another end one can even argue that the Chinese government is protecting themselves from spies penetrating into their secret data. You might argue how this is possible.

Have you ever noticed your Facebook or Instagram accounts suggests you certain people saying “people you might know” and most of these profiles are the ones whose contact numbers you have saved in your cell phone. This indicates that they have access to your cell phone data.

In the same manner, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp are not just a social networking tool but also a spying tool. All the major IT companies are from USA and it is a universally known fact that China and USA are hardcore enemies.

Even though these IT giants might claim that they don’t hand over the data to the third party, this claim might not always hold good. There are instances where these IT companies had cooperated with its home government. Still if someone argues that these kind of spying incidents never takes place, then show them how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook during the elections to help its client.

Here is a list of banned applications in China:

• Social media apps:

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Picasa, WordPress.com, Blogspot, Blogger, Flickr, SoundCloud, Google+, Google Hangouts, Hootsuite.

• Apps:

Google Play (this means that without a VPN you won’t be able to download any apps from Google Play), Whatsapp, Telegram, Line, Periscope, KaKao Talk.

• Video Sharing platform:

Youtube, Vimeo, Daily Motion, Nico Video.

• Media:

The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist Bloomberg, Reuters, The Independent, LeMonde, L’Equipe, Netflix, Google News, many pages of Wikipedia, Wikileaks.

• Work tools:

Google Drive, Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar (generally all Google services), Dropbox, ShutterStock, Slideshare, Slack, iStockPhotos, WayBackMachine, Scribd, Xing, Android, and many VPN sites.

Due to this restriction, it has been a reason for the growth of its own tech giants like Tencent, Baidu and Sina Weibo. But even these internet giants are not free from government interference as recently China had put few of the IT firms under investigation for cyber-security violations. So this is the communist China.

Source: saporedicina.com