There is no denying the fact that China’s economy is firing on all cylinders, so to speak, while the rest of the world retreats into their engine rooms to find out whats wrong with their own motors. But, is China’s opportunity for greatness and widespread wealth becoming a reality or will the GFW and the Communistic government of China be the bottleneck from success?

Firstly, the inspiration for this post came from Sarah Lacy of TechCrunch who just returned from her trip to China to do some research on their economy and web entrepreneurship. She posted up an excellent article on this just yesterday. Then on the eve of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, the Chinese government felt it necessary to flex their muscles, in rememberance of this event, by tweaking the GFW to lock out Microsoft’s just released Bing search engine, Twitter, and live.com.  Thats one huge blow to Microsoft, the leading supplier of software to China, and an even larger blow to Chinese web entrepreneurs.

At a time where China is trying desperately to gain international acceptance, (remember this past year’s Olympics), they proceed to shut out what is potentially one of the most influential platforms in web history, Twitter.  Now, I am not going to say that I necessarily think Twitter will become the next greatest OS, but there is no denying the profound effect it is having on the progression of the web today.  Much of this can be attributed to the lack of significant innovation in the web space due to economic factors, but thats besides the point.  The reality is that Twitter is helping to shape what tomorrow’s web will look like.  Just take Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, and many more as an example.  Everyone is adding status updates to their services and shaping their products around this “feature”.

So, what does all this have to do with China?  Well, they are left out!  China will not be a part of the Twitter revolution.  Now, Twitter copycats will most likely (maybe already have) emerge as a result of the absence, but without being exposed to Twitter, YouTube,  Bing, and the many other services currently shaping the web for the rest of the world, I truly question the validity of their influence on the World Wide Web.

That having been said, there is no doubt that China has an immense, ever increasing population, of potential users for up and coming services started within China.  And, the services that cater to the Chinese will surely be profitable enterprises that will thrive.  However, the direction of the web within China will be much unlike that of the “World” Wide Web, since the factors influencing the development of “China’s” web are controlled.  Does this mean that great things won’t come out of China, and China won’t remain a hot zone for emerging web technology?  No, I absolutely do not think so.  Infact, I think that because of this, some even more interesting things will emerge.  However, the vast majority of the web technology that will emerge from China will lack an understanding of the World Wide Web and worldly expectations.  And, for that reason alone, I personally feel the quality of the new services to come from within China will be lackluster.