https://next.ft.com/content/08564d74-0bbf-11e6-9456-444ab5211a2f
俄羅斯承認中國在互聯網管控技術“走在世界前列”。當然，長城防火牆獨此一家嘛。speaking about building wall，連向來認為自己NO.1的美國人，說的確切點是川普，都承認美國不如中國。
俄羅斯在地理上，屬於開放式的，也就是geographical open的，缺乏天然屏障保護不受外敵入侵。唯一克服這種地理上的開放性，隻能不停的對外擴張。要麽對外擴張，要麽被外敵侵略。你不對外擴張，就會被外敵入侵，你不被外敵入侵，就要想辦法對外擴張。這是一個俄羅斯特有的“地理上開放性”所帶來的一個揮之不去的魔咒。
在烏克蘭危機之後，俄羅斯深深的感到在互聯網領域的控製不足。同時，俄羅斯的東正教的國家衛道士們，長期的對西方的文化滲透表示強烈不滿，對互聯網這樣一個新生事物，又完全束手無策。為了捍衛俄羅斯繼續作為一個“東正教國家”的繼續存在，構築一個“文化壁壘”恐怕是必要的，防止年輕人倒向西方的思潮。
說到底，從90年代末，2000年初的.com泡沫，俄羅斯是錯過了。而中國是.com泡沫之後，互聯網應用領域中，是最炫的，最tech savvy的網紅國家，大量的在美國留學或者創業的人，大量集中在“沒有國家資本存在的”互聯網領域。在有國家資本的領域與國資競爭，你在單細胞狀態的時候，你就死掉了。
中國的海歸當中，有相當重要一部分，是互聯網領域的人。許多人都選擇回國就業，或者創業。2015年的"雙11",單日銷售額143億美元秒榜全球，而美國的cyber monday，單日也就30億美元多。美國在2015年的互聯網零售額，3417億美元。而中國則以5890億美元傲視全球。
所以就互聯網領域與新媒體而言，俄羅斯與中國相比，是落後的，因為他錯過了第一波的泡沫。進入21世紀，一方麵大家比的是誰的基礎建設更好，另外就是比誰更tech savvy，誰更潮。基礎打不好，你玩啥都不轉。
說起來，有一個統計，全球網民37億。“互聯網人口”的第一語言，也就是全球上網的人所使用的語言，80%的網民被十大語言主導。其中，全球互聯網語言人口排名第1的，是英語，大約8.72億人。而中文緊隨其後，網絡人口達到7.04億。全球使用俄語網民大概隻有1億多點。因此，中國完全可以仗著人多，在互聯網領域的應用與內容，跟英語人口世界，一較高下的。
一般來說，know how都是用來形容美國的，幾乎成了美國的代名詞。好像美國就是know how，know how就是美國。現如今，中國與“know how”，一塊出現在西媒上，還是非常之罕見的。
Russia’s chief internet censor enlists China’s know-how
Campaign looks to assert sovereignty over medium seen as being dominated by the US
For an authoritarian government looking to tighten control of an unruly internet, who better to call than the architect of China’s “great firewall”?
That was the thinking of Konstantin Malofeev, a multimillionaire with close links to the Kremlin and Russian Orthodox Church, who has become a key player in Moscow’s drive to tame the web and limit America’s digital influence.
On Wednesday, Mr Malofeev’s censorship lobbying group, Safe Internet League, will welcome a large delegation in Moscow led by Lu Wei, China’s online tsar, and Fang Binxing, the master builder of the country’s digital firewall. The Russians are hoping to learn Chinese techniques for filtering sites they deem undesirable so their contents can be kept from public view.
For Mr Malofeev, the campaign responds to a larger imperative for Russia to assert its sovereignty over an internet that he views as dominated by the US.
“Russians never thought that because we were the first in space or discovered the Antarctic that we needed to fly there under Soviet law because we claimed it,” he said in an interview. “But Americans have this cowboy attitude — ‘now we are going to regulate it from America for the rest of our lives because we want to.’”
Yet to critics, attempts by the deeply religious Mr Malofeev to ban sites featuring pornography, information about suicide and other subjects are merely a fig leaf to suppress dissent. The need to do so may be growing more urgent as Russia endures a deep recession, brought on by low oil prices and worsened by its estrangement from the west.
“Parliamentary elections are coming and they need a solution for the internet,” said Andrei Soldatov, author of The Red Web, a recent history of Russia’s attempts to control the internet.
Mr Soldatov also saw similarities to Mr Malofeev’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis, where he played a key role supporting the country’s Russia-backed separatists. “The security services all failed to stop the [Maidan] revolution, so [Russian president Vladimir] Putin outsourced Ukraine to Malofeev,” he said.
With the shaggy beard and religious fervour of a Dostoevsky character, Mr Malofeev, 41, is part of a hawkish circle of devout Russian Orthodox Christians that has grown in influence during Mr Putin’s third term. Igor Shchegolev, a close university friend, is leading the pivot to China as Mr Putin’s internet tsar. Meanwhile, two of Mr Malofeev’s former employees ran the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic during its war against Ukraine in 2014.
Those ties have prompted many in Moscow to view Mr Malofeev, who made his fortune in private equity, as a proxy for the Kremlin. He admits his drive to regulate the internet came at the request of a “well-known public figure” and was encouraged by his spiritual confessor, whom he is said to share with Mr Putin and Mr Shchegolev. “We took a look at what was on the internet and recoiled in horror. It was probably one of the world’s dirtiest internets,” he said.
As a result, Mr Malofeev raised money from Russia’s main internet providers to set up the Safe Internet League, which finds unsavory content for the government’s understaffed censors to ban. The group now has 5,000 volunteers, he says, scouring the web for child pornography, sites “promoting” assisted suicide, drug use, homosexuality, and other materials it opposes.
The group was also hired by the province of Kostroma and its local Orthodox Church to conduct a trial run for a Chinese-style “white list,” which blocks all sites that have not been preapproved.
Mr Malofeev’s group has drafted plans for a nationwide white list that would be enforced through a contract between parents and internet providers. “We wrote it in huge letters: ‘I accept that my children may see pornography, drugs, paedophiles,’ - scary words, and when they read it, parents won’t sign it. They’ll say, ‘I’ll look at it on my phone at work. I won’t do it at home.’”
Even with China’s considerable know-how, taming Russia’s internet may be impossible. While Beijing has been restricting its citizens’ access for decades, Moscow long overlooked it. Putting the internet back in the box may no longer be feasible. “They don’t have the technology,” Mr Soldatov said. “Their people and their resources aren’t good enough.”
Even so, Russian authorities see another Chinese internet success they would like to emulate: forcing western companies, such as Google and Facebook, to move servers holding their citizens’ data on to their own territory. Russian efforts to do so, under the threat of a ban, have stalled.
Moscow and other advocates say that relocating servers would allow them to better protect their citizens’ privacy. But it would also make it easier for Russian security services to conduct surveillance while bringing western internet companies under Russian law.
While Russia may not have the same clout as China, Mr Malofeev is not planning on backing down. “We want Google to fulfil all the demands of our internet administration, because we see that they did everything in China and it didn’t stop them from working,” he says. “What, can you violate Islamic law and taboos in Saudi Arabia? In Russia we are asking for a hundred times less than what we should be as an Orthodox country.”
