You can just get an e-sim before you go to China. And some VPNs do work. Also, what’s wrong with using WeChat? Everyone who has done their research before going to China knows that it makes things infinitely more convenient. When in Rome…
As for western apps being blocked, that’s not “dystopian”, it’s just a consequence of them refusing to follow Chinese law. There are still western apps that work, namely those that abide by Chinese law, such as the requirement to store Chinese user data on Chinese servers.
It seems to me that that is a common-sense requirement. I don’t want my data being owned by the US, yet because my own country does not have digital sovereignty like China and we have no alternatives to US apps, i have to live with that. I wish my government was more like China’s.
What China did is nothing unusual, they employed a type of protectionist measure to encourage the growth of their own domestic alternatives. This is a common thing for countries to do in industry, China just did it in the digital space. And it greatly paid off.
From some quick research: Telegram, Skype, WhatsApp, Signal, Yahoo!, Bing, Trip .com, Booking .com, all work in China for example. Waze probably works. A lot of the smaller ones do, it’s just the big ones that a) refuse to abide by Chinese laws, and b) would compete with the market share of domestic Chinese alternatives that are blocked.
By the way, if independent app developers want to launch apps in China it is possible to do so, they just need to go through the proper process: https://daxueconsulting.com/china-app-market/
And besides that, what’s wrong with using Chinese apps when you’re in China? Many of the big ones like WeChat and Didi apparently have a translation feature these days, so that you don’t even need to learn any Chinese (although it’s considered polite to learn at least a bit of the language of a country you go to visit… frankly i think it’s rude for native English speakers to expect everyone to speak English wherever you go)
WhatsApp doesn’t work in Shanghai, we had to use WeChat. Her emails also only went through after she left china. So Gmail is also blocked.
I’m not a native English speaker. I don’t feel comfortable using a language that I don’t control. Obviously I’m more comfortable with Dutch and English because then I can truly communicate how I want. Just far higher quality.
My wife has been learning Dutch for a year now, doing classes and has received her integration certificate quite quickly.
She still hasn’t spoken a word Dutch to anyone here in flanders. She doesn’t like how she sounds in Dutch. She’s embarrassed. So we talk in English all the time.
I don’t expect everyone to speak English, but it would be very useful for there to be one global language. English has the most non-native speakers globally.
Edit: your article states that foreign apps need to apply the great firewall of china.
I’m getting this feeling that china really wants all the information on their citizens.
Social media like lemmy is the way to go imo. No country owns the data.
Gmail is of course not accessible because Google is blocked due to refusing to abide by Chinese laws.
She’s embarrassed. So we talk in English all the time.
Nobody is going to stop you from speaking whatever language you want when you go to China. All i was saying is that you shouldn’t go to foreign countries expecting everyone to speak English. This is not exclusive to China.
I don’t expect everyone to speak English, but it would be very useful for there to be one global language.
But why does the West get to decide what that language is? Why shouldn’t, say, Spanish or Chinese, both of which have more native speakers, be the global language instead?
I’m getting this feeling that china really wants all the information on their citizens.
And the US doesn’t? Were you not paying attention to Snowden’s NSA leaks? Are you not aware that all US tech companies, especially the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc. collaborate with the US government and it’s intelligence agencies?
What China is primarily interested in is its national stability and the security of their citizens. They are not going to open the door to massive psychological manipulation campaigns by foreign governments, or hand over their citizens’ data to US companies which may just as well be extensions of the intelligence agencies.
Just like the US isn’t happy with TikTok being so popular in the US (despite the fact that, unlike Google and co. in China, TikTok actually does abide by US law and even stores US data on US servers) and have been trying to ban it or fully control it.
Cierto, pero si van a propagar el idioma debido a que mucha gente lo habla, no estarán difundiendo el español de España. Será más bien algún dialecto latino (que si no lo sabías, es bastante más diferente que el inglés estadounidense es contra el inglés de Inglaterra)
You can just get an e-sim before you go to China. And some VPNs do work. Also, what’s wrong with using WeChat? Everyone who has done their research before going to China knows that it makes things infinitely more convenient. When in Rome…
As for western apps being blocked, that’s not “dystopian”, it’s just a consequence of them refusing to follow Chinese law. There are still western apps that work, namely those that abide by Chinese law, such as the requirement to store Chinese user data on Chinese servers.
It seems to me that that is a common-sense requirement. I don’t want my data being owned by the US, yet because my own country does not have digital sovereignty like China and we have no alternatives to US apps, i have to live with that. I wish my government was more like China’s.
What China did is nothing unusual, they employed a type of protectionist measure to encourage the growth of their own domestic alternatives. This is a common thing for countries to do in industry, China just did it in the digital space. And it greatly paid off.
Which western apps work in China where the majority spoken language is English?
Is Lemmy allowed in china?
From some quick research: Telegram, Skype, WhatsApp, Signal, Yahoo!, Bing, Trip .com, Booking .com, all work in China for example. Waze probably works. A lot of the smaller ones do, it’s just the big ones that a) refuse to abide by Chinese laws, and b) would compete with the market share of domestic Chinese alternatives that are blocked.
By the way, if independent app developers want to launch apps in China it is possible to do so, they just need to go through the proper process: https://daxueconsulting.com/china-app-market/
And besides that, what’s wrong with using Chinese apps when you’re in China? Many of the big ones like WeChat and Didi apparently have a translation feature these days, so that you don’t even need to learn any Chinese (although it’s considered polite to learn at least a bit of the language of a country you go to visit… frankly i think it’s rude for native English speakers to expect everyone to speak English wherever you go)
WhatsApp doesn’t work in Shanghai, we had to use WeChat. Her emails also only went through after she left china. So Gmail is also blocked.
I’m not a native English speaker. I don’t feel comfortable using a language that I don’t control. Obviously I’m more comfortable with Dutch and English because then I can truly communicate how I want. Just far higher quality.
My wife has been learning Dutch for a year now, doing classes and has received her integration certificate quite quickly.
She still hasn’t spoken a word Dutch to anyone here in flanders. She doesn’t like how she sounds in Dutch. She’s embarrassed. So we talk in English all the time.
I don’t expect everyone to speak English, but it would be very useful for there to be one global language. English has the most non-native speakers globally.
Edit: your article states that foreign apps need to apply the great firewall of china.
I’m getting this feeling that china really wants all the information on their citizens.
Social media like lemmy is the way to go imo. No country owns the data.
It is possible that WhatsApp doesn’t work in China. I only did a very brief search online to answer your previous question and some people appeared to say that they could access it without a VPN: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windscribe/comments/1cckjjt/whatsapp_works_in_china_without_a_vpn/
Gmail is of course not accessible because Google is blocked due to refusing to abide by Chinese laws.
Nobody is going to stop you from speaking whatever language you want when you go to China. All i was saying is that you shouldn’t go to foreign countries expecting everyone to speak English. This is not exclusive to China.
But why does the West get to decide what that language is? Why shouldn’t, say, Spanish or Chinese, both of which have more native speakers, be the global language instead?
And the US doesn’t? Were you not paying attention to Snowden’s NSA leaks? Are you not aware that all US tech companies, especially the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc. collaborate with the US government and it’s intelligence agencies?
What China is primarily interested in is its national stability and the security of their citizens. They are not going to open the door to massive psychological manipulation campaigns by foreign governments, or hand over their citizens’ data to US companies which may just as well be extensions of the intelligence agencies.
Just like the US isn’t happy with TikTok being so popular in the US (despite the fact that, unlike Google and co. in China, TikTok actually does abide by US law and even stores US data on US servers) and have been trying to ban it or fully control it.
Spanish is a Western language of brutal colonizers
Cierto, pero si van a propagar el idioma debido a que mucha gente lo habla, no estarán difundiendo el español de España. Será más bien algún dialecto latino (que si no lo sabías, es bastante más diferente que el inglés estadounidense es contra el inglés de Inglaterra)