Actually, I think it is because of the lack of good opportunities. In Seattle when you want to look for a prestigious tech job, it used to be just Microsoft and Amazon. That leaves you one option if you are leaving one of them. Its getting better in the past several years now that Google, Facebook are building up their satellite offices. I moved to the bay area recently after ten years in Seattle, and found that the working culture here is a lot better than that in Seattle. Also in Seattle you don't get a lot of recruiters contacting you while in bay area recruiting spam is a problem. I think this is a good opportunity for startups to open a Seattle office.
It must be that there are users using Dropbox to transfer data that is considered illegal in China. I think the best way is to setup an office and servers in China and negotiate with the government for compliance. As a user I hope you can do this, as a Chinese citizen I also know there is a reason for censorship.
I am not surprised that you are surprised that tianya.cn ( hosted in Beijing) is still online. We talk shit about Chinese government like that when I was in college, and that's more than a decade ago. One of the most famous forum at the time is called "Shui Mu Qing Hua." This is just one of many mythes that western media contributed to, and that's why I ask people to get some first-hand source. Just to clarify, I don't mean there are free speech in China in the same level with that in western countries. I mean the fact that you are surprised is because western media is doing a bad job reporting China and people seem to have complete faith in those news.
Now when it comes to talking shit in front of foreigners to save face and part of Chinese culture, I hope you don't mean that Chinese culture is inferior. When my Americans friends talk shit about their government in front of me, they understand that I speak fluent English and I know exactly what they mean. I don't talk shit about Chinese government in front of westerners I am not close with, because I know they don't speak Chinese, know nothing about Chinese culture (or feeling Chinese culture is inferior) and will take my comments out of context. Let me give you an example: giving cash as gift to people you know, friends, colleagues, bosses, is a new year tradition in China, and the money amount can be very large. We have similar gift-exchange for many occasions. This is a tradition that everyone in China follow, and it does make it difficult to fight corruption. In western countries when nobody should accept gift of more than $25 from people with working relationships, there is no way people can understand this, and most likely, they will (or self-righteously) say this tradition is backward. Power to you if you can change a culture, but it is ridiculous to see westerns response when hearing you might receive a cash gift worth a week of your income and there is nothing wrong with it. Culture difference between China and the West, is much bigger than the difference between western countries.
For some reason I cannot reply your comment, maybe because my karma is too low now.
"Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government."
I would argue, in most cases, they are not normal citizens, even though in western media, they are portrait as freedom fighter. I can even tell you how to find information to prove this point: check out the China Study program in John Hopkins University (the top one in US), and they will tell you the conclusion in political science field is the freedom fighters from the Tiananman Square in 1989 are extremists. I don't think the reporters will go out and interview those political scientists. There are other good China Study program you can get academic opinions from, including Univ. of Iowa (another top 1), UW is good as well.
I am not arguing with you that there is no human right issue in China. There are, but the problem is presented out of the context and in many cases with false information. I am only suggesting that people do more firsthand investigation and talk to Chinese for some full stories, but looks like I am getting enough down-votes now.
My point is that majority of western news about China are biased and sensational and taken out of context. You form your opinion based on the source that is already filtered by the journalists.
You will have much better view of the whole story if you can read Chinese media, just for the full story. You might refuse to do so because they are controlled by the government. I ask you to talk to Chinese, you refuse as well because you think there is no need. How "sound" do you think your opinion will be?
This statement is exactly why I think Google is evil in this case. This is what Google PR talk, you will never know how their employee feels. In reality, if you read Chinese and the other side of story, you probably will feel the employees are more a victim of Google instead of China. I think Google deliberately add this statement to make them sounds like "caring."
I won't even try to convince you with my opinion, just encourage you to talk to Chinese living in western countries to get a full story. Google has good information about "emotion" and it is a media company. A popular media theory is "if you control their emotion, you control their opinion."
So you think the government will go after the google employee because they are going public to support Google? Have you heard any Google Chinese employee "reportedly" supporting the employer and bashing Chinese government, even those living in US?
Do you know the full story of the 40 people in jail for criticizing the government? Do you know the population in China? Do you know how many people are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial?
Yes it is. After open the text file in browser, manually select "Unicode" encoding, it will show the Simplified Chinese translation, and the translation is actually pretty good.
Actually, I think it is because of the lack of good opportunities. In Seattle when you want to look for a prestigious tech job, it used to be just Microsoft and Amazon. That leaves you one option if you are leaving one of them. Its getting better in the past several years now that Google, Facebook are building up their satellite offices. I moved to the bay area recently after ten years in Seattle, and found that the working culture here is a lot better than that in Seattle. Also in Seattle you don't get a lot of recruiters contacting you while in bay area recruiting spam is a problem. I think this is a good opportunity for startups to open a Seattle office.