I was also very negative on the Great Firewall for a long time but I’ve come around to the belief that it’s necessary, even if its benefits are completely unintentional.

Even libs understand that fake news is a huge threat to democracy and social cohesion, if the media can’t be trusted to report fairly on Bernie Sanders how can they be trusted to report fairly on Xi Jinping? How much worse would propaganda in the MSM get if the US thought there was a chance it was going to cause domestic unrest in China? If we challenge and critically approach the framework of free press as a conduit for unbiased information that selects for accuracy, then the Great Firewall might be the least bad alternative.

Furthermore, Western tech companies have horrible privacy practices and literally collude with US intelligence services, even US allies like the EU are sick of their shit and are feuding with the US over data taxes. Nurturing Chinese tech companies and keeping the data of Chinese citizens out of the hands of US companies was a very, very prescient move (if intentional).

I’m skeptical of the idea “the free market is bad, except when it comes to the press”. I still have a lot of gripes with the Great Firewall as a concept and its implementation but I also don’t know how to resolve those problems without emboldening the US’s efforts at hybrid warfare.