Probably very long. Given the success of the Chinese ecosystem compared to other regions on the globe, including a lot of democratic countries without significant limits on expression, it doesn't seem to be very important.
The first answer is that innovation can be channelled towards military or surveillance technology instead. The government has no problem with research into facial recognition, enterprise software, drones, and whatnot. Under the so called 'military-civil fusion' strategy its if anything encouraged and heavily bolstered.
Another point that has become fairly popular among the more conservative or nationalist Chinese intellectuals is that free expression in the workplace is if anything, harming the US because it's seen as divisive and hindering research. There were a lot of comments with negative overtones when it came to BLM, and stuff like the internal Google Maven protests. For a lot of nationalist Chinese commentators free expression in the West is seen as damaging state capacity and the ability of large firms to work effectively.
Discussions about the first amendment often elide its true purpose, keeping the government honest. One way that a lack of free speech can hurt a country is that smarter individuals are more likely to get arrested due to their greater innate capability to come up with novel-to-them ideas, some of which are "booby trapped" and get their originators arrested. However, the consequences of it being illegal to make practical attempts at changing the government truly come home to roost when officials realize that they can steal. The less ability citizens have to exchange information that threatens the authority of the regime, the less able they are to not be stolen from. The problem with that is, private economic activity needs resources, and officials tend to take all they can get. Again and again, in the history of countries around the world, the activity of many individuals given relatively small domains of authority has lead to the destruction of the nation's industrial capacity. Since it is impossible to question the bribe-taking of the inspector without questioning the legitimacy of the system who installed him, criminals within government quickly discover that they can do anything they want, so long as they keep their superiors happy, which is typically accomplished by making sure they get a cut of the proceeds.
If China's system is really "open source" then this is really dumb. Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation.
I don't see how this could possible benefit them over any measurable amount of time. Sure, they can do private repos for sensitive stuff, but the benefit of an open system like github is not in the closed off stuff... it is in the openness and propensity to inspire collaboration. Without the openness, they will only fall behind from the second they enable their one way information shield.
> If China's system is really "open source" then this is really dumb.
I get the sense from reading this that we're both aware that with China that won't be the case.
> Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation.
In a sense I feel like this relies on an exaggeration of the benefits and requirements of open source that most people in the west would have. Thinking about it right now I can see two questions.
1) Do we really need a free and open (as in free speech) internet to bring many people's code contributions and skills together?
2) Is having a walled off system actually better, on the reasoning that developers in China make the best "chinese software" (meaning software that will do well in or be useful to China)?
I think the answer to the first is that the need for free speech for open source at first seems necessary, and is certainly still helpful, but not ultimately needed for this to work. China can block topics like on any other site and chances are the people that still want to contribute ultimately will, just like people still use Wechat, Baidu, etc. I would think that as it stands you can still have a large group of hard-working contributors without some 'sensitive' topics coming up. I really think that the benefits of the open source model aren't as tied to the principles of western countries as a lot of people would initially assume, myself included.
The second question might be worth looking into some more, in terms of market research and what is successful in China. Plus Chinese developers are probably more used to having to work with the government in regards to censorship and surveillance, which GitHub could shut the doors on pretty fast.
Either way I don't think that having restricted topics is going to cripple the benefits of having a much larger contributor/talent pool and open source code. Not having freedoms isn't as good of course but I don't think open source software depends on them as much as some might say.
The first answer is that innovation can be channelled towards military or surveillance technology instead. The government has no problem with research into facial recognition, enterprise software, drones, and whatnot. Under the so called 'military-civil fusion' strategy its if anything encouraged and heavily bolstered.
Another point that has become fairly popular among the more conservative or nationalist Chinese intellectuals is that free expression in the workplace is if anything, harming the US because it's seen as divisive and hindering research. There were a lot of comments with negative overtones when it came to BLM, and stuff like the internal Google Maven protests. For a lot of nationalist Chinese commentators free expression in the West is seen as damaging state capacity and the ability of large firms to work effectively.