Whether Google’s departure from the mainland jolts a segment of Chinese users to invest resources in completely evading the GFW depends upon their resources and preferences. Headlines notwithstanding, search results on Google’s HK portal are still subject to considerable filtering, though less sensitive topics (“religion in China”) return a much larger list of results than they used to. A less strict cens0rship and enforcement regime may be much more effective at limiting the types of information authorities are really worried about (which may be the information that is effective at motivating social/political change). Consider the following two cens0rship regimes step functions as examples:

And one with a more lenient filter:

The second situation is more threatening from a freedom-of-information perspective, in that individuals interested in accessing only certain sensitive information will find ways to evade the firewall but never make the leap to having complete online freedom (certain proxies work at certain times for certain sites. A full VPN, on the other hand, typically requires actually paying for overseas bandwidth but also provides total access). Whether full access is worthwhile will depend on whether someone can satisfy enough of their preferences within the limited regime. Total information access might simply not be worth it.

To be fair, this discussion is already focusing on a minority of Chinese internet users. Most are completely happy to chat on QQ and pick digital crops with their Happy Farmer Friends, and could really care less about spending much time gathering news and information online. This minority is non-trivial, however, in the sense that they are more likely to be educated, and will be (if not already are) in decision making roles.

My prior assumption is that (even among the liberal educated minority) Zhou-everyman is much more interested in the seemingly banal (finding images of scantily clad women, say) than in fact checking recent news stories or looking up details of Tian@nmen.* If s/he is able to satisfy the first preference, then s/he will not spend much more effort to gain total access. Those who gain total access (for the purpose of the seemingly banal) also have the ancillary capacity to access other information; presumably the ultimate goal of freedom of information proponents.

Stark contrasts within the Chinese intranet vis-a-vis the global world wide web, then, might motivate a larger number of Chinese internet users to seek out total access to information. Providing stepping stones along the way could potentially harm long-term information exposure.

* Confirmation bias: after gaining access to a VPN, the first thing I did was look at lolcats and failblog, both of which are blocked. I have yet to access anything that would be considered extremely sensitive in the eyes of Chinese authorities. Frankly, F@lunG0ng is kind of boring.