That's.. not an argument. Of course if you omit the significant differences between two things they look the same.

In the end everyone making choices about what kind of relations they want to have is called discretion.

>In the end everyone just block everyone?...

Would that be so terrible? Used to be a lot of time the answer was just war. Well, now, if they can't get along on the playground, people just take their marbles and go home.

It's not so terrible when you consider the alternative.

I suppose you could argue something along the (slightly different) positions that nuclear weapons reduce the likelihood of interstate conflict, and tasers increase the use of police force -- i.e. when war was the only recourse, the result was no recourse, and we were better off.

Not convincing though IMO, but the point is pretty academic at this point so it's hard for me to say one way or another. Maybe we're all talking past each other? It's one thing to say that having recourse to block someone is good, but quite another to say that taking recourse to block someone is good.

The scale of the Chinese great firewall is rather unprecedented. Sites and keywords blocked, and homegrown sites have to follow constantly increasing filter lists and report users. Blocking a few sites is nothing in comparison to this.

China have not specified reasons for their blocking.

At least the Taiwanese authorities have.