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Business History of Modern China
October 17, 2025
History of Chinese Computer
Evolution of Chinese language computing technology
- English has 26 alphabets. How can Chinese — a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet — be input on a computer?
- Development of electronic Chinese input methods: software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols.
Chinese Keyboards
Taiwan’s Silicon Shield
From its origin as an electronics contract manufacturer for the Silicon Valley in the late 1970s, Taiwan has grown to be a key player in the global information hardware industry.
Taiwan and Electronics Contract Manufacturing
- 1970s: Taiwan’s electronics industry started when foreign companies outsourced assembly to Taiwan.
- 1980s: Rising wages, property prices, and currency appreciation in Taiwan increased costs for businesses.
- 1990s: Taiwan lifted investment bans on mainland China. Companies moved across the strait for cheap labor and resources.
Shenzhen: Huaqiangbei Electronics Market
Discuss: Nailing Jelly
- Was Bill Clinton wrong? If so, why?
- How did China change the Internet? How did the Internet change China?
- From empowering citizenship to echo chamber: What’s the future of the web?
Puzzle: The US innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates?
Key Questions
- Google in China: Why did it go? Why did it leave?
- What is the Great Fire Wall? How does censorship (not) work?
- Did Chinese Internet boom in spite of censorship or because of it?
Google in China
- Founded in 1998 in Menlo Park, CA
- Unofficial motto: “Don’t be evil”
- 2000: partnership with Yahoo helped Google become the leading search engine.
- 2006: Launched Chinese site Google.cn
Google China: Brushes with the Censor
What led to Google’s decision to leave?
Discuss: Google’s dilemma
- Does it matter if Google self-censors or China does the censoring, if the result is the same?
- Google gets asked to remove contents in many markets. What’s so different about China?
Google in 2018: Project Dragonfly
- Since its exit from search engine market in 2010, Google had been rebuilding its presence in China.
- In 2017, Google established the Google AI China Center in Shanghai, with an estimated 700 employees working on advertising and other development.
- In 2018, it was reported that Google created Project Dragonfly, a search engine that would comply with Beijing’s censorship requirements.
Discuss: Project Dragonfly
- Should Google build Project Dragonfly?
- Should a Google employee voice concerns about Dragonfly internally, go public, or resign in case of disagreement with the project?
Zuckerberg in China
Bing: The One That Stayed
Discussion: Censored (2018)
- What is “porous censorship”?
- How should we think about censorship in the Chinese context?
- Explain the three Fs: fear, friction, flooding
Paradoxes of the Chinese Internet
- China is an authoritarian state exercising strict control and censorship.
- At the same time, the country is a leader in digital technology, from 5G to AI to e-commerce.
- Censorship in China is restrictive and repressive, but also porous and permissive at times.
Data Sovereignty Challenge
- The WWW was supposed to eliminate physical boundaries and create a global public sphere.
- Essential public infrastructures worldwide depend on digital systems controlled by a handful of American private corporations – a reliance now seen a pressing geopolitical risk.
- Is the Internet splitting into multipolar hardware stacks and information zones?
Google: Don’t be evil… no more?
- Google’s initial motto was “don’t be evil”. It was downgraded to a “mantra” in 2009.
- The motto was not included in Alphabet’s code of ethics when the parent company was created in 2015.
- In February 2025, Google’s owner dropped the promise not to use AI for weapons.