Chinese people know their country’s internet is different.
There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation.
They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it.
Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet — and collective online memory — is disappearing in chunks.
The number of Chinese language websites is now only slightly higher than those in Indonesian and Vietnamese, and smaller than those in Polish and Persian. It’s half the number of Italian language sites and just over a quarter of those in Japanese.
One reason for the decline is that it is technically difficult and costly for websites to archive older content, and not just in China.
But in China, the other reason is political.
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