China softens as US announces Clean Network | WeChat and TikTok’s infiltration overseas
On August 5th, the U.S. announced that they will be blocking CCP influence in five areas on what they refer to as a Clean Network for the U.S. That means the U.S. will block the CCP at five areas: carriers, stores, apps, cloud storage and cables. Among the targets are China’s Alibaba, Biadu and Tencent, which offer downloadable apps, in U.S. mobile app stores. According to a statement from the U.S. State Department, more than 30 countries have already joined the US’s net cleaning campaign. And many of the world’s largest telecommunications companies have been cleared as clean telcos, pledging to use only trusted carriers on their clean networks.
The CCP uses Internet censorship in mainland China to restrict citizens’ direct access to the majority of the international Internet, and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are banned. Several China experts have compared the US’s net cleaning campaign to China’s firewall, suggesting that the U.S. action is an attempt to create a technological iron curtain outside of China’s firewall and to completely exclude China’s high tech industries from the future international digital economy. China’s state media, Xinhua, interviewed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in response to Pompeo’s Iron Curtain speech of July 2013. His attitude this time was quite moderate.
