We have here two seemingly unrelated stories. You probably have already read them, so I'll give you just the headlines.

TimesSelect Draws About 156,000 Web-Only Subs in First 4 Months

Google Agrees to Censor Results in China

What these two event have in common is, they're both about building walls. China – with help from Google, Microsoft, and other US high-tech companies – is trying to wall off those parts of the internet it finds threatening. The New York Times is walling off its op-ed page from people it finds threatening.

Even if you agree with me (and Will Collier) about China, you might think I'm engaging in partisan hyperbole regarding TimesSelect. Heck, I would have thought so just last week. When TimesSelect was announced, I thought it was just a bad business decision. Recent news makes me think otherwise:

Since the Times put the words of its eight Op-Ed columnists behind a paid wall last September, it has also decided that only TimesSelect subscribers should be allowed to e-mail Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, et al.

That's right. It doesn't just cost fifty bucks just to read Paul Krugman, it costs that much just to tell him he's full of it – something you know even without paying to read his stuff.

Now here's where it gets interesting.

Since TimesSelect launched last fall, 156,000 people have paid to sign up. About the same number of paid subscribers to the print edition have jumped through the hoops to get their "free" access. As Mickey Kaus has reported time and again, the NYT says it needs to get "millions" of Selectees to make any money. But where are those millions going to come from?

The weekday NYT millions of paid subscribers – and yet only 150,000 of them have been enthused enough to take advantage of their already-paid-for Select subscription. Four months in already, the buzz has worn off - so it's fair to wonder where those "millions" will come from. As if to drive home my point, here's another story:

The New York Times Co. said Tuesday its fourth-quarter earnings fell 41 percent from the same period a year ago, weighed down by charges for staff reductions and an accounting change.

The Times isn't expanding – it's shedding staff like Ford Motor Company. All the while, it's losing influence, too. With the Great Wall of TimesSelect complete, I won't even read Maureen Dowd, not even just to have something to complain about on the blog.

So what's this have to do with China? I'm glad you asked.

The New York Times built a wall, to keep out the riffraff and retile the echo chamber. All the while, it's losing money and prestige. Mark my words: The same will happen to Beijing. And the higher they build their wall, the sooner that day will come.