You're making a bad assumption - that because protectionism resulted in a flourishing Internet economy, that it wouldn't have happened without protectionism. Imagine what kind of Internet economy we'd have in China without this dumb firewall and protectionist policies in place - Baidu might actually be a global rival to Google instead of the piece of crap it is :) Global consumers might be happily buying from Taobao instead of the piece of crap that Amazon is :)
Yes. They're not blocking because of protectionism. It's because they can't censor the content to meet the local rules. China is not alone in this but they are at the thick end of the censorship wedge.
