[권혁태 칼럼] China blocks Dropbox and we switched over to Baidu cloud

 

 

중국에서 요즘 카톡 라인이 시진핑 주석 한국방문에 맞춰 차단 또는 불안정하게 운영된지 좀 된다. 드랍박스같은 경우는 6월 천안문 25주년을 기점으로 완전 차단되었는데 드랍박스로 업무문서들을 공유하던 우리회사는 중국 국내 서비스로 대안을 찾기로 했다. 한동안 버티다가 오늘 드디어 나도 바이두로 옮겨탔는데 중국국내다 보니 훨씬 빠른 연결 속도와 무려 1TB를 무료로 제공하는데 있어 상당히 놀라웠다. 중국기업들이 시작은 늦었지만 미국기업들보다 몇배는 무섭게 서비스를 제공하고 있어서 향후 10년후 인터넷시장이 어떻게 변할지 궁금하다. 위챗이 중화권을 잡고 (7억명이상) whatsapp과 facebook messenger와 경쟁하는것처럼.

 

In addition to the long list of global websites such as Youtube, Facebook, Google, Twitter being blocked in China, Dropbox was recently added to the list of websites that is no longer accessible in mainland China. My company, HCD Learning, has been using Dropbox has a main cloud service to share documents across departments, team members and foreign experts. Now the access to Dropbox has been cutoff, we were “forced” to switch over to domestic service offered by Baidu. I was pleasantly surprised by the competitive service offering that while it I had to spend a few minutes to add on Baidu cloud folder to my Mac, I can see that the longer term benefit is greater. The only setback for foreigners is that it’s entirely in Chinese for now. So learn some Chinese if you can. Here are the comparison between Chinese cloud storage service offering compared to counterpart such as Google and Dropbox “How to Get 2TB Cloud Storage for Free with Baidu Pan (Drive)”

 

Pricing and Storage

You can get 2 Terabyte of free cloud storage with Baidu for life for free. Unlimited bandwidth. It’s a promo going on right now. This will cost you $1200 a year with Google Drive. Dropbox offers 500 GB for $499 a year.

On another note, Tencent is offering 10TB. 360 Cloud offers 36TB for free and supposedly has faster streaming services but I haven’t tried those yet. But yeah, 36 Terabytes sounds good to me

 

http://pan.baidu.com/download#pan is the link to download the cloud service.

There is never clear and logical reason as to why some sites are blocked in China. No one would publicly announce it for you and there is only guessing work involved. For the case of Dropbox,

 

The reblocking of Dropbox, which recently passed 300 million registered users worldwide, comes during China’s most severe crackdown on Google’s services to date. Gmail, Google Maps, and other Google services have been entirely blocked in China since early June, in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest on June 4.

 

While it is common for China to surpress overseas internet services and their users around the anniversary, which is one of the most controversial dates in the country’s history, it is unprecedented for the clampdown to last for nearly four weeks, as is the case right now.

 

Speaking using a pseudonymn, one GreatFire founder told TNW that the organization believes China’s blocking of Google and the reversal of its policy on Dropbox shows the country “is willing to crack down on other foreign services more harshly than ever.”

 

The founder went on to explain that this particular block on Dropbox seems more serious than before. While the previous block prevented users from accessing Dropbox.com, they were able to use desktop apps to some degree during that period — this time around, however, the GreatFire founder believes all Dropbox-related services could be blacked out in China.

 

 

It’s painful for me to use all of the useful foreign websites through VPN connection. I actually start to think that Chinese government has more motivation to support domestic internet service providers by blocking foreign services than all the political motivation (supposedly this is the official reason) to censor politically sensitive communications. This is in forms of unfair trade but in China, survival and winning market share is much higher priority than fair play at this point in time. Once Chinese internet companies gain enough market share at home, they often tend to go out to South East Asia then to the rest of world. I am quite curious what the next three years will look like once Chinese mega internet companies start to aggressively expand foreign markets i.e. wechat and taobao “”It’s painful for me to use all of the useful foreign websites through VPN connection. I actually start to think that Chinese government has more motivation to support domestic internet service providers by blocking foreign services than all the political motivation (supposedly this is the official reason) to censor politically sensitive communications. This is in forms of unfair trade but in China, survival and winning market share is much higher priority than fair play at this point in time. Once Chinese internet companies gain enough market share at home, they often tend to go out to South East Asia then to the rest of world. I am quite curious what the next three years will look like once Chinese mega internet companies start to aggressively expand foreign markets i.e. wechat and taobao.

 

 

칼럼니스트 권혁태

캐나다 퀸즈대학과 중국 북경대학에서 경영학과 중국어를 공부했다. 졸업 후 골드만삭스 도쿄 및 싱가폴에서 근무하였으며 2008년부터 Business Tianjin 이라는 중국경제잡지에 글로벌 경제와 중국경제 현황에 대하여 매월 영어로 글을 기고하고 있다. 세계 여러나라 여행을 다니며 현지의 문화,역사,음식,사람들과 마주하여 느끼는 것을 글로 담아내기를 즐기며, 급현하는 중국의 변화에 주시하고 있다. (현재 개인 블로그 운영중 http://hyuktae.wordpress.com)