Pinterest was freely accessible in China for many years. But Now the Government of china blocked Pinterest due to some offensive contents which cross the boundaries of Chinese Censors. Pinterest is mostly used by ladies to pin images related to home decor, fashion, hair style, etc.
According to the Greatfire.org which is responsible for censorships and accessibility of websites whether to use or not, “This block was allowed earlier on March 2017.”
It may or may not a coincidence that this block allowed When the meeting of China’s National Congress occurs. It is a sensitive time for China when some important decision took place and political talks happen.
This pattern fits the China’s old pattern of blocking foreign sites which compete with local rivals.
From a paper published in January 2017, According to Cho-Wen Chu,” China is playing a Smart Game to discriminate foreign rivals to uplift the local rivals”. Cho-Wen Chu is a professor at Taiwan’s Chinese Culture University.
If We put some more light on this then you will get that Blocking of International sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube leads to the rise of local rivals such as Renren, Baidu, Weibo, and Youku.
Excuse of Explicit Political Content
It is only an excuse by Chinese Government that they Banned Pinterest for Explicit Political content. Basically, they are protecting the local sites which are similar to them.
It is literally a weird logic that they copy from a famous website and launch a similar website and banned the famous one in China. China knows that their local websites can easily earn profits due to Massive Population in Country.
It is notable that there are 731 million users of Internet in China and 95% of the users use the web from mobile devices, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre. With that huge amount of Mobile users, any Social Media can create a booming profit by this. But it is not happening.
This ban has a huge advantage for Chinese tech companies like Alibaba’s Faxian ( A Pinterest copy) and Meitu ( similar to Instagram).
We are not claiming that China is doing anything wrong. Every country should use their own apps and websites which help their citizens but Copy from another one then launch it in country is not a good thing. It is literally a stealing of great ideas.
