Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Encyclopedia
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows. In accordance with these laws, more than sixty Internet regulations have been made by the People's Republic of China (PRC) government, and censorship systems are vigorously implemented by provincial branches of state-owned ISP
s, business companies, and organizations. China's internet environment remains one of the world’s most restrictive, and China is ranked "Not Free" in Freedom House's internet survey.
The censorship is not applied in Hong Kong
and Macau
, as they are special entities recognized by international treaty vested with independent judicial power and not subject to most laws of the PRC, including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information.
The escalation of the government's effort to neutralize critical online opinion comes after a series of large anti-Japanese, anti-pollution, anti-corruption protests, and ethnic riots, many of which were organized or publicized using instant messaging
services, chat rooms, and text messages. The size of the Internet police
is rumored at more than 30,000. Critical comments appearing on Internet forum
s, blogs, and major portals such as Sohu
and Sina
usually are erased within minutes.
The apparatus of the PRC's Internet repression is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world. The governmental authorities not only block website content but also monitor the Internet access of individuals. Amnesty International
notes that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.” The offences of which they are accused include communicating with groups abroad, opposing the persecution of the Falun Gong
, signing online petitions, and calling for reform and an end to corruption.
In 2010 about 1.3 million websites closed down in mainland China made 41 percent fewer websites at the end of 2010 than a year earlier.
with three regulations issued by China’s central government. The first regulation was called the Temporary Regulation for the Management of Computer Information Network International Connection. The regulation was passed in the 42nd Standing Convention of the State Council on 23 January 1996. It was formally announced on 1 February 1996, and updated again on the 20th of May 1997.
The content of the first regulation states, “ No units or individuals are allowed to establish direct international connection by themselves.” (Item 6) “All direct linkage with the Internet must go through ChinaNet
, GBNet, CERNET
or CSTNET
. A license is required for anyone to provide Internet access to users.” (Item 8)
The second regulation was the Ordinance for Security Protection of Computer Information Systems. It was issued on February 18 of 1994 by the State Council to give the responsibility of Internet security protection to the Ministry of Public Security, which is entitled to “supervise, inspect and guide the security protection work”, and to “investigate and prosecute illegal criminal cases” (Item 17)
The Ordinance regulation further led to the Security Management Procedures in Internet Accessing issued by the Ministry of Public Security in December 1997. The regulation defines "harmful information" and further lists five kinds of harmful activities regarding Internet usage, “ (1) Intruding in a computer information network or making use of network resources without authorization; (2) Canceling, altering or adding functions in a computer information network without authorization; (3) Canceling, altering or adding data and application software for the purpose of memory, processing, or transmission in a computer information network without authorization; (4) Intentionally producing, disseminating destructive software such as a computer virus; (5) Other activities that are harmful to the security of a computer information network.” (Item 6)
, with some sites blocked, yet similar sites allowed or even blocked in one city and allowed in another. The blocks have often been lifted for special occasions. For example, The New York Times
was unblocked when reporters in a private interview with Jiang Zemin
specifically asked about the block and he replied that he would look into the matter. During the APEC
summit in Shanghai during 2001, normally-blocked media sources such as CNN
, NBC
, and the Washington Post became accessible. Since 2001, the content controls have been further relaxed on a permanent basis, and all three of the sites previously mentioned are now accessible from mainland China. However, access to the New York Times was briefly re-blocked as of 20 December 2008, although it has been accessible for the first months of 2009 as of 17 May.
Section Five of the Computer Information Network and Internet Security, Protection, and Management Regulations approved by the State Council on 11 December 1997 states the following:
No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:
(MPS). It started in 1998, began processing in November 2003, and the first part of the project passed the national inspection on 16 November 2006 in Beijing. According to MPS, its purpose is to construct a communication network and computer information system for police to improve their capability and efficiency. According to China Central Television
(CCTV), by 2002 the preliminary work of the Golden Shield Project had cost US$800 million (equivalent to RMB 6,400 million or €640 million).
The Golden Shield Project is part of what is sometimes known outside of mainland China
as the Great Firewall of China . The system blocks content by preventing IP address
es from being routed through. It consists of standard firewalls and proxy server
s at the Internet gateway
s. The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis
and at the University of New Mexico
said that the Great Firewall is not a true firewall since banned material is sometimes able to pass through several routers or through the entire system without being blocked.
Article 14 gives Chinese officials full access to any kind of sensitive information they wish: “ [...] an IIS provider must keep a copy of its records for 60 days and furnish them to the relevant state authorities upon demand in accordance to the law.” Finally, article 15 defines what information must be restricted: “IIS providers shall not produce, reproduce, release, or disseminate information that: [...] endangers national security, [...]is detrimental to the honor of the state, [...] undermines social stability, the state’s policy towards religion, [...] other information prohibited by the law or administrative regulations”.
Research into mainland Chinese Internet censorship
has shown that censored websites included, before the 2008 Summer Olympics:
From the above list, the websites of BBC News, the Chinese Wikipedia, Yahoo! Hong Kong and the Voice of America were later unblocked (as observed on 17 August 2008). However, Voice of America and Yahoo! Hong Kong returned to their blocked status later on (as observed on 14 December 2009).
In the second half of 2009 the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter were blocked, presumably because of containing social or political commentary (similar to LiveJournal in the above list). An example is the commentary on the deadly riots in Xinjiang in July 2009. Another reason suggested for the block is that activists can utilize them to organize themselves. In 2010 Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo
became a forbidden topic in Chinese media due to his winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
.
Blocked websites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines, such as Baidu
and Google China
. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.
According to a Harvard
study, at least 18,000 websites are blocked from within mainland China.
According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist. However, once (if) unblocked, the websites will be reindexed.
A senior official of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office said the software's only purpose was "to filter pornography on the Internet". Foreign ministry official, Qin Gang said the internet had always been open in China and that the government's administration of it to prevent the spread of harmful information was in accordance with the law. The general manager of Jinhui, which developed Green Dam, said: "Our software is simply not capable of spying on Internet users, it is only a filter."
Human rights advocates and internet users in China have been especially critical, saying that while the software is ostensibly aimed at protecting users against pornography on the web, it "is really a thinly concealed attempt by the government to expand censorship". Online polls conducted on Sina
, Netease
, Tencent
and Sohu
revealed overwhelming (>70%) rejection of the software by netizen
s. A poll conducted by the Southern Metropolis Daily showed similar results.
On 10 June, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee issued an instruction requiring the Chinese media to stop publishing questioning or critical opinions. The instruction also required online forums to block and remove "offensive speech evolved from the topic" promptly. Xinhua later commented that "support [for Green Dam] largely stems from end users, opposing opinions primarily come from a minority of media outlets and businesses".
On 14 August 2009, Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology, announced that computer manufacturers and retailers were no longer obliged to ship the software with new computers for home or business use, but that schools, internet cafes and other public use computers would still be required to run the software.
to post comments favorable to government policies in an attempt to shape, sway, and control public opinion
on various Internet message boards. The commentators are said to be paid for every post that either steers a discussion away from anti-party or sensitive content or that advances the Communist party line
on domestic websites, bulletin board system
s, and chatrooms. The term is sometimes extended to anyone who posts an excessively patriotic comment about China online.
Providing the government's position in this fashion would be in keeping with principles of freedom of expression and would not be considered censorship, as long as it is done transparently and does not overwhelm alternative sources of information. However, in the case of the "50 Cent Party", private citizens are paid by the government to pretend to be “ordinary” netizens without disclosing that they are in fact being paid to promote the government's positions. And this is not a small operation - in July 2008 there were an estimated 280,000 paid web commentators doing this sort of work. The number of Internet users in China had doubled by mid-2011 and it is possible that the number of paid commentators has grown to match.
and Twitter
as well as local alternatives Fanfou and Youku. Chinese news sites mainly fed from Xinhua news service for updates about the rioting in Ürümqi, comments features on websites were disabled on some stories to prevent negative posts about the lack of news. Internet connections in Ürümqi were reportedly down. Many unauthorized postings on local sites and Google were said to have been "harmonised
" by government censors, and emails containing terms related to the riots were blocked or edited to prevent discord. Nevertheless, images and video footage of the demonstrations and rioting were soon found posted on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr
.
Coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the government suppression of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square
, the government ordered internet portals, forums and discussion groups to shut down their servers for maintenance between 3 and 6 June.
The Guardian reported that in excess of 300 Chinese sites had "posted increasingly blasé maintenance messages on the anniversary". A number of websites, such as Fanfou and WordKu.com, made a veiled protest at state censorship by referring to the date sarcastically as "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day". The day before the mass shut-down, Chinese users of Twitter, Hotmail
and Flickr
, among others, reported a widespread inability to access these services.
had stated that Internet access would not be censored at the Olympic Village press center. However, journalists that arrived at the press center after its opening on 25 July found that sites containing politically sensitive matter were inaccessible and learned that the IOC had quietly agreed to "some of the limitations." IOC press chief Kevan Gosper
admitted that, "I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on Web site access during Games time. I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related." Foreign media was not informed about this private agreement, and IOC press chief Kevan Gosper
apologized to journalists for giving the impression that Internet access during the Olympics would be completely unrestricted. Furthermore, on 31 July 2008, the BOCOG Chinese spokesman, Sun Weide, indicated that the media will have "convenient and sufficient" access to the Internet. However, he also said that the government will not allow the spread of any information on the internet that is forbidden by Chinese law or harms national interests. China had unblocked access to some Internet Web sites, including non-politically sensitive parts of English Wikipedia, after the IOC protested that ongoing blocking "would reflect very poorly" on the host nation; subsequently, the Technology Ministry said that there would continue to be controls, and it was unclear what the final list of prohibited sites would be.
who pointed out that about 20,000 foreign journalists would be directly affected. A pre-Olympics crackdown by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre on “illicit” websites, temporarily shut down Qingdaonews.com, 21CN, Sichuan online, Shenzhen online, Tom online, and cjn.cn. Some websites and blogs with politically sensitive content, such as bulletin board services on tecn.cn and Xici.net, have been blocked.
On 1 August 2008, Reuters
reported that Internet restrictions would be lifted for reporters covering the Olympics. Beginning 1 August, in response to international criticism, some previously-blocked websites became accessible, including Human Rights Watch
and Amnesty International
. Many websites related to Falun Gong and Tibet
remained blocked. The BBC's Chinese-language site was intermittently accessible and blocked. As of 5 August, the BBC's English website previously barred, remain open, if slow to load – as does the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily. However the Chinese version was blocked again in December 2008.
Reporters Without Borders
subsequently confirmed that its website, except for the Chinese version, was accessible for the first time in China since 2003. The Chinese version of the website is still blocked. While some previously-censored foreign websites were accessible during the Olympics, Reporters Without Borders claims that there has been increased restriction of domestic websites and online activity, including the popular internet chatting service "QQ". On 2 August 2008, the Associated Press
reported that although Chinese organizers unblocked some sites at the request of the IOC, others remained censored for journalists covering the Summer Games. Even though Chinese officials and high-ranking IOC members have repeatedly said there would be no censorship on the Internet for accredited journalists covering the games, many sites the Chinese government objects to, for example, the spiritual movement Falun Gong, are blocked. The sites being blocked seem to change daily. Some key words always draw blank screens. Sites that host thousands of blogs are also routinely blocked. As of 4 August, Human Rights in China and websites affiliated with Tibetan independence and the outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong, remained inaccessible inside and outside of Olympic venues.
Access to Apple, Inc.'s online iTunes Store was blocked in China after it emerged that Olympic athletes had been downloading a pro-Tibetan album in a subtle act of protest. However, this action lasted only for a short time before it was revoked by the government. The album, Songs for Tibet, was produced by a group called The Art of Peace Foundation, and features 20 tracks from well-known singers and songwriters including Sting, Moby
, and Suzanne Vega
.
On 23 July 2008, the family of Liu Shaokun was notified that he had been sentenced to one year re-education through labor for “inciting a disturbance”. As a teacher in Sichuan province, he had taken photographs of collapsed schools and posted these photos online.
On 18 July 2008, Huang Qi was formally arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing state secrets. Huang had spoken with the foreign press and posted information on his website about the plight of parents who had lost children in collapsed schools.
ISP/IDCs have sent "lockdown notices" to customers.
Companies have received orders stating that from 1–25 August 2008:
In customers' interests, companies have suggested:
through the perception that users are being watched." The enforcement (or threat of enforcement) of censorship creates a chilling effect where individuals and businesses willingly censor their own communications to avoid legal and economic repercussions. Professor Yantao BI reported on 30 October 2008 that some websites in mainland China have already imposed the controversial true-name registration policy.
and Google China
) as well as domestic ones (for example, Baidu
). Attempting to search for censored keywords in these Chinese search engines will yield few or no results. Previously, google.cn displayed the following at the bottom of the page: "According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not shown." As was the case when searching for information about the 2011 uprising in Egypt.
In addition, a connection containing intensive censored terms may also be closed by The Great Firewall, and cannot be reestablished for several minutes. This affects all network connections including HTTP and POP
, but the reset is more likely to occur during searching.
Before the search engines censored themselves, many search engines had been blocked, namely Google and AltaVista
. Technorati
, a search engine for blogs, has been blocked.
Different search engines implement the mandated censorship in different ways. For example, the search engine Bing
is reported to censor search results from searches conducted in simplified Chinese characters (used in the PRC), but not in traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan and elsewhere).
s in universities were closed down or restricted public access since 2004, including the SMTH BBS
and the YTHT
BBS.
Furthermore, the government is emphasizing the danger in spreading 'false rumors' (yaoyan), making the permissive usage of Weibo and social networks a public debate. In addition, new fines and short arrests are becoming an optional punishment to whoever expresses false information through the different internet formats, as this is seen as a risk to social stability.
Although the government does not have the physical resources to monitor all Internet chat rooms and forums, the threat of being shut down has caused Internet content providers to employ internal staff, colloquially known as "big mama
s", who stop and remove forum comments which may be politically sensitive. In Shenzhen
, these duties are partly taken over by a pair of police-created cartoon characters, Jingjing and Chacha
, who help extend the online 'police presence' of the Shenzhen authorities. These cartoons spread across the nation in 2007 reminding internet users that they are being watched and should avoid posting 'sensitive' or 'harmful' material on the internet.
However, Internet content providers have adopted some counter-strategies. One is to post politically sensitive stories and remove them only when the government complains. In the hours or days in which the story is available online, people read it, and by the time the story is taken down, the information is already public. One notable case in which this occurred was in response to a school explosion in 2001, when local officials tried to suppress the fact the explosion resulted from children illegally producing fireworks
. By the time local officials forced the story to be removed from the Internet, the news had already been widely disseminated.
In addition, Internet content providers often replace censored forum comments with white space which allows the reader to know that comments critical of the authorities had been submitted, and often to guess what they might have been.
In July 2007, the city of Xiamen
announced it would ban anonymous online postings after text messages and online communications were used to rally protests against a proposed chemical plant in the city. Internet users will be required to provide proof of identity when posting messages on the more than 100,000 Web sites registered in Xiamen.
Some hotels in China are also advising internet users to obey local Chinese internet access rules by leaving a list of internet rules and guidelines near the computers. These rules, among other things, forbid linking to politically unacceptable messages, and inform internet users that if they do, they will have to face legal consequences.
In September 2007, some data centers were shut down indiscriminately for providing interactive features such as blogs and forums. CBS
reports an estimate that half the interactive sites hosted in China were blocked.
Inc.- is standard Internet infrastructure equipment and that providing this sort of equipment actually aids the flow of information, and that the PRC is fully able to create its own infrastructure without Western help. By contrast, human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch
and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders
argue that if companies stopped contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts, the government could be forced to change.
A similar dilemma is faced by foreign content providers such as Yahoo!
(See Shi Tao
for more information), AOL
, and Skype
who abide by PRC government wishes, including having internal content monitors, in order to be able to operate within mainland China. Also, in accordance with mainland Chinese laws, Microsoft
began to censor the content of its blog service Windows Live Spaces
, arguing that continuing to provide Internet services is more beneficial to the Chinese. Michael Anti
, a Chinese journalist whose blog on Windows Live Spaces
was removed by Microsoft, agreed that the Chinese are better off with Windows Live Spaces than without it.
The Chinese version of MySpace, launched in April 2007, has many censorship-related differences from other international versions of the service. Discussion forums on topics such as religion and politics are absent and a filtering system that prevents the posting of content about Taiwan independence
, the Dalai Lama
, Falun Gong, and other "inappropriate topics" has been added. Users are also given the ability to report the "misconduct" of other users for offenses including "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."
Additionally, reporters in the western media have also suggested that China's internet censorship of foreign websites may also be a means of forcing mainland Chinese users to rely on China's own e-commerce industry, thus self-insulating their economy from the dominance of international corporations.
.
(木子美) and Zhuying Qingtong (竹影青瞳) wrote online diaries of their sex lives and became minor celebrities. This was widely reported and criticized in mainland Chinese news media, and several of these bloggers' sites have since been blocked in China to this day. This coincided with an artistic nude photography fad (including a self-published book by dancer Tang Jiali
) and the appearance of pictures of minimally clad women or even topless photos in a few mainland Chinese newspapers, magazines and websites. Many dating and "adult chat" sites, both Chinese and foreign, have been blocked. Some, however, continue to be accessible although this appears to be due more to the Chinese government's ignorance of their existence than any particular policy of leniency.
and OAS
special mandates on freedom of expression called on Internet corporations to "work together ... to resist official attempts to control or restrict use of the Internet." Google finally responded when attacked by hackers rumoured to be hired by the Chinese government by threatening to pull out of China (Newsweek)
connections to outside mainland China are not blocked, so circumventing all of the censorship and monitoring features of the Great Firewall of China is trivial for those who have these secure connection methods to computers outside mainland China available to them. However, disruptions of VPN services have been reported.
Since free hosting blog services like Blogger
and Wordpress.com
frequently face blockage, bloggers and webmasters aiming for an audience in China often debate merits of the various paid hosting services. Some China-focused services explicitly offer to change a blog's IP address within 30 minutes if it is blocked by the authorities.
Psiphon
is a software project designed by University of Toronto
's Citizen Lab
under the direction of Professor Ronald Deibert
, Director of the Citizen Lab. Psiphon is a circumvention technology that works through social network
s of trust and is designed to help Internet users bypass content-filtering systems set up by governments.
The Tor
website is blocked although the Tor network is not, making Tor (in conjunction with Privoxy
) an effective tool for circumvention of the censorship controls if one can acquire it. Tor maintains a public list of entry nodes, so the authorities could easily block it if they had the inclination. According to the sections 6.4 and 7.9, Tor is vulnerable to timing analysis by Chinese authorities, so it allows a breach of anonymity. Thus for the moment, Tor allows uncensored downloads and uploads, although no guarantee can be made with regard to freedom from repercussions.
Since 25 September 2009, about 80% of the public relays are blocked by IP address and TCP port combination but Tor users are still connecting to the network through non-public relays (bridges).
As an alternative to Tor, there are various HTTP/HTTPS
Tunnel Services.
It was common in the past to use Google
's cache feature to view blocked websites. However, this feature of Google seems to be under some level of blocking, as access is now erratic and does not work for blocked websites. Currently the block is mostly circumvented by using proxy servers outside the firewall, and is not difficult to carry out for those determined to do so. Some well-known proxy servers have also been blocked.
Some Chinese citizens used the Google mirror elgooG
after China blocked Google. It is believed that elgooG survived the Great Firewall of China
because the firewall operators thought that elgooG was not a fully functional version of Google. (This information is out of date, referring to an early blockade of Google in 2002)
There are several techniques (websites and programs) that may be used to browse blocked sites. These include:
, has become a popular and widespread internet meme
in China. These hoaxes, ten in number, reportedly originated in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship and have become an icon of citizens' resistance to censorship.
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television
issued a directive on 30 March 2009 to highlight 31 categories of content prohibited online, including violence, pornography and content which may "incite ethnic discrimination or undermine social stability". Many netizens believe the instruction follows the official embarrassment over the "Grass Mud Horse
" and the "River Crab
". Industry observers believe that the move was designed to stop the spread of parodies or other comments on politically sensitive issues in the runup to the anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square protests
.
Filter circumvention software
Analysis
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s, business companies, and organizations. China's internet environment remains one of the world’s most restrictive, and China is ranked "Not Free" in Freedom House's internet survey.
The censorship is not applied in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
, as they are special entities recognized by international treaty vested with independent judicial power and not subject to most laws of the PRC, including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information.
The escalation of the government's effort to neutralize critical online opinion comes after a series of large anti-Japanese, anti-pollution, anti-corruption protests, and ethnic riots, many of which were organized or publicized using instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
services, chat rooms, and text messages. The size of the Internet police
Internet police
Internet police is a generic term for police and secret police departments and other organizations in charge of policing Internet in a number of countries...
is rumored at more than 30,000. Critical comments appearing on Internet forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
s, blogs, and major portals such as Sohu
Sohu
Sohu.com, Inc. is a search engine company headquartered in the Sohu.com Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing, People’s Republic of China. This company and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine, on-line multiplayer gaming and other services. For the fiscal year ended December...
and Sina
Sina.com
SINA is an online media company for China and Chinese communities around the world. SINA operates four major business lines: Sina Weibo, SINA Mobile, SINA Online, and SINA.net. SINA has over 100 million registered users worldwide...
usually are erased within minutes.
The apparatus of the PRC's Internet repression is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world. The governmental authorities not only block website content but also monitor the Internet access of individuals. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
notes that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.” The offences of which they are accused include communicating with groups abroad, opposing the persecution of the Falun Gong
Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
, signing online petitions, and calling for reform and an end to corruption.
In 2010 about 1.3 million websites closed down in mainland China made 41 percent fewer websites at the end of 2010 than a year earlier.
Beginning of Regulations
China started its Internet censorshipInternet censorship
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
with three regulations issued by China’s central government. The first regulation was called the Temporary Regulation for the Management of Computer Information Network International Connection. The regulation was passed in the 42nd Standing Convention of the State Council on 23 January 1996. It was formally announced on 1 February 1996, and updated again on the 20th of May 1997.
The content of the first regulation states, “ No units or individuals are allowed to establish direct international connection by themselves.” (Item 6) “All direct linkage with the Internet must go through ChinaNet
ChinaNet
ChinaNet is China Telecom's internet service, and is one of two major commercial networks approved by the State Council to be a national Interconnecting Network in 1996, under Order No. 195, "Interim Regulation on International Interconnection of Computer Information Networks in the PRC", the...
, GBNet, CERNET
Cernet
The China Education and Research Network is the first nationwide education and research computer network in China. The CERNET project is funded by the Chinese government and directly managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education...
or CSTNET
CSTNET
CSTNET or China Science and Technology Network offers Internet services to the Chinese education, research, scientific and technical communities, relevant government departments and hi-tech enterprises, providing services such as network access, host trusteeship, virtual host and domain name...
. A license is required for anyone to provide Internet access to users.” (Item 8)
The second regulation was the Ordinance for Security Protection of Computer Information Systems. It was issued on February 18 of 1994 by the State Council to give the responsibility of Internet security protection to the Ministry of Public Security, which is entitled to “supervise, inspect and guide the security protection work”, and to “investigate and prosecute illegal criminal cases” (Item 17)
The Ordinance regulation further led to the Security Management Procedures in Internet Accessing issued by the Ministry of Public Security in December 1997. The regulation defines "harmful information" and further lists five kinds of harmful activities regarding Internet usage, “ (1) Intruding in a computer information network or making use of network resources without authorization; (2) Canceling, altering or adding functions in a computer information network without authorization; (3) Canceling, altering or adding data and application software for the purpose of memory, processing, or transmission in a computer information network without authorization; (4) Intentionally producing, disseminating destructive software such as a computer virus; (5) Other activities that are harmful to the security of a computer information network.” (Item 6)
State Internet Information Office
In May 2011 the State Council Information Office announced transfer of its offices which regulated the internet to a new subordinate agency, the State Internet Information Office which would be responsible for regulating the internet in the People's Republic of China. The relationship of the new agency to other agencies in the PRC which regulate the internet was unclear from the announcement.Enforcement
In December 1997, Public Security minister Zhu Entao released new regulations to be enforced by the ministry that inflict fines for 'defaming government agencies,' 'splitting the nation,' and leaking "state secrets." Violators could face a fine up to 15,000 Yuan ($1800). Banning appears mostly coordinated and ad hocAd hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
, with some sites blocked, yet similar sites allowed or even blocked in one city and allowed in another. The blocks have often been lifted for special occasions. For example, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
was unblocked when reporters in a private interview with Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin is a former Chinese politician, who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1989 to 2002, as President of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 2003, and as Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2005...
specifically asked about the block and he replied that he would look into the matter. During the APEC
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is a forum for 21 Pacific Rim countries that seeks to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region...
summit in Shanghai during 2001, normally-blocked media sources such as CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, and the Washington Post became accessible. Since 2001, the content controls have been further relaxed on a permanent basis, and all three of the sites previously mentioned are now accessible from mainland China. However, access to the New York Times was briefly re-blocked as of 20 December 2008, although it has been accessible for the first months of 2009 as of 17 May.
Section Five of the Computer Information Network and Internet Security, Protection, and Management Regulations approved by the State Council on 11 December 1997 states the following:
No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:
- Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations;
- Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
- Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;
- Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities;
- Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;
- Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder;
- Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people;
- Injuring the reputation of state organizations;
- Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.
Golden Shield Project
The Golden Shield Project is owned by the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of ChinaMinistry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
The Ministry of Public Security , is the principal police and security authority of the mainland of the People's Republic of China and the government agency that exercises oversight over and is ultimately responsible for day-to-day law enforcement...
(MPS). It started in 1998, began processing in November 2003, and the first part of the project passed the national inspection on 16 November 2006 in Beijing. According to MPS, its purpose is to construct a communication network and computer information system for police to improve their capability and efficiency. According to China Central Television
China Central Television
China Central Television or Chinese Central Television, commonly abbreviated as CCTV, is the major state television broadcaster in mainland China. CCTV has a network of 19 channels broadcasting different programmes and is accessible to more than one billion viewers...
(CCTV), by 2002 the preliminary work of the Golden Shield Project had cost US$800 million (equivalent to RMB 6,400 million or €640 million).
The Golden Shield Project is part of what is sometimes known outside of mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
as the Great Firewall of China . The system blocks content by preventing IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es from being routed through. It consists of standard firewalls and proxy server
Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
s at the Internet gateway
Gateway (telecommunications)
In telecommunications, the term gateway has the following meaning:*In a communications network, a network node equipped for interfacing with another network that uses different protocols....
s. The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
and at the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
said that the Great Firewall is not a true firewall since banned material is sometimes able to pass through several routers or through the entire system without being blocked.
Legislation
In September 2000, the State Council Order No. 292 created the first content restrictions for Internet content providers. China-based Web sites cannot link to overseas news Web sites or distribute news from overseas media without separate approval. Only “licensed print publishers” have the authority to deliver news online. Non-licensed Web sites that wish to broadcast news may only publish information already released publicly by other news media. These sites must obtain approval from state information offices and from the State Council Information Agency. Article 11 of this order mentions that “content providers are responsible for ensuring the legality of any information disseminated through their services”.Article 14 gives Chinese officials full access to any kind of sensitive information they wish: “ [...] an IIS provider must keep a copy of its records for 60 days and furnish them to the relevant state authorities upon demand in accordance to the law.” Finally, article 15 defines what information must be restricted: “IIS providers shall not produce, reproduce, release, or disseminate information that: [...] endangers national security, [...]is detrimental to the honor of the state, [...] undermines social stability, the state’s policy towards religion, [...] other information prohibited by the law or administrative regulations”.
Censored content
Out of the Top 100 Global Websites, 12 are currently blocked in mainland China.Research into mainland Chinese Internet censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
has shown that censored websites included, before the 2008 Summer Olympics:
- Websites related to the persecuted Falun Gong spiritual practice
- News sources that often cover some topics such as police brutalityPolice brutalityPolice brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....
, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989Tiananmen Square protests of 1989The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
, freedom of speechFreedom of speechFreedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
and democracy sites. These sites include Voice of AmericaVoice of AmericaVoice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
, BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
, and Yahoo! Hong Kong - Media sites which may include unregulated content, social commentarySocial commentarySocial commentary is the act of rebelling against an individual, or a group of people by rhetorical means, or commentary on social issues or society...
or political commentary censored by the PRCPeople's Republic of ChinaChina , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. The Chinese WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and LiveJournalLiveJournalLiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
are examples of such blocked sites. - Sites hosted by the Government of the Republic of ChinaGovernment of the Republic of ChinaThe Republic of China was formally established by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1912 in Nanjing under the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China but this government was moved to Beijing in the same year and continued as the internationally recognized government of China until 1928. In the history...
(Taiwan) and major newspaper and television media and other sites with information on Taiwanese independencePolitical status of TaiwanThe controversy regarding the political status of Taiwan hinges on whether Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu should remain effectively independent as territory of the Republic of China , become unified with the territories now governed by the People's Republic of China , or formally declare... - Web sites that contain obscenityObscenityAn obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
, pornography, or criminalCrimeCrime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
activity. - The website of the Tibetan government in exileCentral Tibetan AdministrationThe Central Tibetan Administration , is an organisation based in India with the stated goals of "rehabilitating Tibetan refugees and restoring freedom and happiness in Tibet". It was established by the 14th Dalai Lama in 1959 shortly after his exile from Tibet...
and of the "Voice of TibetVoice of TibetVoice of Tibet is an independent radio station based in Norway transmitting shortwave radio programmes in the Tibetan language as well as Mandarin Chinese. The station began broadcasting on 14 May, 1996 and was founded by three Norwegian NGOs: Norwegian Human Rights House, The Norwegian Tibet...
", a Norway-based dissident radio organization. - "Nine Commentaries" or the nine articles that were published by theepochtimes.com that comment on the Chinese Communist Party
From the above list, the websites of BBC News, the Chinese Wikipedia, Yahoo! Hong Kong and the Voice of America were later unblocked (as observed on 17 August 2008). However, Voice of America and Yahoo! Hong Kong returned to their blocked status later on (as observed on 14 December 2009).
In the second half of 2009 the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter were blocked, presumably because of containing social or political commentary (similar to LiveJournal in the above list). An example is the commentary on the deadly riots in Xinjiang in July 2009. Another reason suggested for the block is that activists can utilize them to organize themselves. In 2010 Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule in China...
became a forbidden topic in Chinese media due to his winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
2010 Nobel Peace Prize
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned Chinese human rights activist "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"...
.
Blocked websites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines, such as Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
and Google China
Google China
Google China is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu...
. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.
According to a Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
study, at least 18,000 websites are blocked from within mainland China.
According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist. However, once (if) unblocked, the websites will be reindexed.
Green Dam Youth Escort
A notice issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on 19 May stated that, as of 1 July 2009, manufacturers must ship machines to be sold in mainland China with the Green Dam software, and that manufacturers are required to report the number of machines shipped with the software to the government. The official statement claimed its objective was "to build a green, healthy, and harmonious online environment, and to avoid the effects on and the poisoning of our youth's minds by harmful information on the internet".A senior official of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office said the software's only purpose was "to filter pornography on the Internet". Foreign ministry official, Qin Gang said the internet had always been open in China and that the government's administration of it to prevent the spread of harmful information was in accordance with the law. The general manager of Jinhui, which developed Green Dam, said: "Our software is simply not capable of spying on Internet users, it is only a filter."
Human rights advocates and internet users in China have been especially critical, saying that while the software is ostensibly aimed at protecting users against pornography on the web, it "is really a thinly concealed attempt by the government to expand censorship". Online polls conducted on Sina
Sina.com
SINA is an online media company for China and Chinese communities around the world. SINA operates four major business lines: Sina Weibo, SINA Mobile, SINA Online, and SINA.net. SINA has over 100 million registered users worldwide...
, Netease
NetEase
NetEase is a Chinese internet company that operates 163.com, a popular web portal which received over 546 million page views in June of 2005. The company has grown rapidly since its founding in June 1997, thanks in part to its investment in search engine technology and massively multiplayer...
, Tencent
Tencent QQ
Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in mainland China. As of July 11, 2011, the active QQ users accounts for QQ IM totaled 812.3 million, possibly making it the world's second largest online community. The number of simultaneous...
and Sohu
Sohu
Sohu.com, Inc. is a search engine company headquartered in the Sohu.com Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing, People’s Republic of China. This company and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine, on-line multiplayer gaming and other services. For the fiscal year ended December...
revealed overwhelming (>70%) rejection of the software by netizen
Netizen
The term Netizen is a portmanteau of the English words internet and citizen. It is defined as an entity or person actively involved in online communities and a user of the internet, especially an avid one. The term can also imply an interest in improving the internet, especially in regard to open...
s. A poll conducted by the Southern Metropolis Daily showed similar results.
On 10 June, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee issued an instruction requiring the Chinese media to stop publishing questioning or critical opinions. The instruction also required online forums to block and remove "offensive speech evolved from the topic" promptly. Xinhua later commented that "support [for Green Dam] largely stems from end users, opposing opinions primarily come from a minority of media outlets and businesses".
On 14 August 2009, Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology, announced that computer manufacturers and retailers were no longer obliged to ship the software with new computers for home or business use, but that schools, internet cafes and other public use computers would still be required to run the software.
50 Cent Party
The "50 Cent Party" is an unofficial pejorative term for people hired by the PRC GovernmentGovernment of the People's Republic of China
All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the People's Republic of China, State Council, and the People's Liberation Army . This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...
to post comments favorable to government policies in an attempt to shape, sway, and control public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
on various Internet message boards. The commentators are said to be paid for every post that either steers a discussion away from anti-party or sensitive content or that advances the Communist party line
Party line (politics)
In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...
on domestic websites, bulletin board system
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
s, and chatrooms. The term is sometimes extended to anyone who posts an excessively patriotic comment about China online.
Providing the government's position in this fashion would be in keeping with principles of freedom of expression and would not be considered censorship, as long as it is done transparently and does not overwhelm alternative sources of information. However, in the case of the "50 Cent Party", private citizens are paid by the government to pretend to be “ordinary” netizens without disclosing that they are in fact being paid to promote the government's positions. And this is not a small operation - in July 2008 there were an estimated 280,000 paid web commentators doing this sort of work. The number of Internet users in China had doubled by mid-2011 and it is possible that the number of paid commentators has grown to match.
Political censorship
July 2009 Ürümqi riots
Government censors disabled keyword searches for "Urumqi", and blocked access to FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
as well as local alternatives Fanfou and Youku. Chinese news sites mainly fed from Xinhua news service for updates about the rioting in Ürümqi, comments features on websites were disabled on some stories to prevent negative posts about the lack of news. Internet connections in Ürümqi were reportedly down. Many unauthorized postings on local sites and Google were said to have been "harmonised
River crab (Internet slang)
River crab and Harmonious/Harmonize/Harmonization are Internet slangs created by Chinese netizens in reference to Internet censorship or the other censorship of China...
" by government censors, and emails containing terms related to the riots were blocked or edited to prevent discord. Nevertheless, images and video footage of the demonstrations and rioting were soon found posted on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
.
20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
, the government ordered internet portals, forums and discussion groups to shut down their servers for maintenance between 3 and 6 June.
The Guardian reported that in excess of 300 Chinese sites had "posted increasingly blasé maintenance messages on the anniversary". A number of websites, such as Fanfou and WordKu.com, made a veiled protest at state censorship by referring to the date sarcastically as "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day". The day before the mass shut-down, Chinese users of Twitter, Hotmail
Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL". It was one of the first...
and Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
, among others, reported a widespread inability to access these services.
IOC agreement
Initially, the PRC government, the IOC and Jacques RoggeJacques Rogge
Jacques Rogge, Count Rogge , is a Belgian sports bureaucrat. He is the eighth and current President of the International Olympic Committee .-Life and career:...
had stated that Internet access would not be censored at the Olympic Village press center. However, journalists that arrived at the press center after its opening on 25 July found that sites containing politically sensitive matter were inaccessible and learned that the IOC had quietly agreed to "some of the limitations." IOC press chief Kevan Gosper
Kevan Gosper
Kevan Gosper is a former Australian athlete who mainly competed in the 400 metres. He was formerly a Vice President of the International Olympic Committee.-1956 Summer Olympics:...
admitted that, "I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on Web site access during Games time. I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related." Foreign media was not informed about this private agreement, and IOC press chief Kevan Gosper
Kevan Gosper
Kevan Gosper is a former Australian athlete who mainly competed in the 400 metres. He was formerly a Vice President of the International Olympic Committee.-1956 Summer Olympics:...
apologized to journalists for giving the impression that Internet access during the Olympics would be completely unrestricted. Furthermore, on 31 July 2008, the BOCOG Chinese spokesman, Sun Weide, indicated that the media will have "convenient and sufficient" access to the Internet. However, he also said that the government will not allow the spread of any information on the internet that is forbidden by Chinese law or harms national interests. China had unblocked access to some Internet Web sites, including non-politically sensitive parts of English Wikipedia, after the IOC protested that ongoing blocking "would reflect very poorly" on the host nation; subsequently, the Technology Ministry said that there would continue to be controls, and it was unclear what the final list of prohibited sites would be.
Partial censorship
The censorship at the press center added to a growing skepticism about the claims of the government that it would improve its record on human rights. The "broken promise" was condemned by Reporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
who pointed out that about 20,000 foreign journalists would be directly affected. A pre-Olympics crackdown by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre on “illicit” websites, temporarily shut down Qingdaonews.com, 21CN, Sichuan online, Shenzhen online, Tom online, and cjn.cn. Some websites and blogs with politically sensitive content, such as bulletin board services on tecn.cn and Xici.net, have been blocked.
On 1 August 2008, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
reported that Internet restrictions would be lifted for reporters covering the Olympics. Beginning 1 August, in response to international criticism, some previously-blocked websites became accessible, including Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
and Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
. Many websites related to Falun Gong and Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
remained blocked. The BBC's Chinese-language site was intermittently accessible and blocked. As of 5 August, the BBC's English website previously barred, remain open, if slow to load – as does the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily. However the Chinese version was blocked again in December 2008.
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
subsequently confirmed that its website, except for the Chinese version, was accessible for the first time in China since 2003. The Chinese version of the website is still blocked. While some previously-censored foreign websites were accessible during the Olympics, Reporters Without Borders claims that there has been increased restriction of domestic websites and online activity, including the popular internet chatting service "QQ". On 2 August 2008, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that although Chinese organizers unblocked some sites at the request of the IOC, others remained censored for journalists covering the Summer Games. Even though Chinese officials and high-ranking IOC members have repeatedly said there would be no censorship on the Internet for accredited journalists covering the games, many sites the Chinese government objects to, for example, the spiritual movement Falun Gong, are blocked. The sites being blocked seem to change daily. Some key words always draw blank screens. Sites that host thousands of blogs are also routinely blocked. As of 4 August, Human Rights in China and websites affiliated with Tibetan independence and the outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong, remained inaccessible inside and outside of Olympic venues.
Access to Apple, Inc.'s online iTunes Store was blocked in China after it emerged that Olympic athletes had been downloading a pro-Tibetan album in a subtle act of protest. However, this action lasted only for a short time before it was revoked by the government. The album, Songs for Tibet, was produced by a group called The Art of Peace Foundation, and features 20 tracks from well-known singers and songwriters including Sting, Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
, and Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
.
Crackdown on Internet activists
In 2001, Wang Xiaoning and other Chinese activists were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for using a Yahoo email account to post anonymous writing to an Internet mailing list, which Yahoo, after pressure from the Chinese government eventually blocked. However, with the help of the World Organization for Human Rights, Wang and Shi Tao, another online activist sued Yahoo, accusing the Internet provider of abetting the torture of pro-democracy writers by providing information that allowed the Chinese government to identify them.On 23 July 2008, the family of Liu Shaokun was notified that he had been sentenced to one year re-education through labor for “inciting a disturbance”. As a teacher in Sichuan province, he had taken photographs of collapsed schools and posted these photos online.
On 18 July 2008, Huang Qi was formally arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing state secrets. Huang had spoken with the foreign press and posted information on his website about the plight of parents who had lost children in collapsed schools.
Locking data centers
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China ordered all ISPs to lock down their data centers from 1–25 August 2008. During this time no one could enter data centers to do maintenance. Sites with illegal information were blocked automatically. Authorities stated it was to ensure data security, to prevent hostile personnel from entering data centers and adding illegal information.ISP/IDCs have sent "lockdown notices" to customers.
Companies have received orders stating that from 1–25 August 2008:
- Customers will not be able to enter data centers.
- Customers will not able to add new hardware.
- Any sites with illegal information will be blocked automatically, and site owners will not be able to request unblocking as they normally can.
In customers' interests, companies have suggested:
- Customers should manage their sites carefully. Forums mediators should check any new posts before publishing, and customers should shut down all interactive services including forums, because sites will be blocked if customers fail to filter out illegal information.
- Avoid maintenance.
- Reduce promotions.
- Contact the company as soon as possible if a customer wants to add new hardware.
Self-censorship
Internet censorship in the PRC has been called "a panopticon that encourages self-censorshipSelf-censorship
Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own work , out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities of others, without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority...
through the perception that users are being watched." The enforcement (or threat of enforcement) of censorship creates a chilling effect where individuals and businesses willingly censor their own communications to avoid legal and economic repercussions. Professor Yantao BI reported on 30 October 2008 that some websites in mainland China have already imposed the controversial true-name registration policy.
Search engines
One part of the block is to filter the search results of certain terms on Chinese search engines. These Chinese search engines include both international ones (for example, yahoo.com.cnYahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
and Google China
Google China
Google China is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu...
) as well as domestic ones (for example, Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
). Attempting to search for censored keywords in these Chinese search engines will yield few or no results. Previously, google.cn displayed the following at the bottom of the page: "According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not shown." As was the case when searching for information about the 2011 uprising in Egypt.
In addition, a connection containing intensive censored terms may also be closed by The Great Firewall, and cannot be reestablished for several minutes. This affects all network connections including HTTP and POP
Post Office Protocol
In computing, the Post Office Protocol is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern...
, but the reset is more likely to occur during searching.
Before the search engines censored themselves, many search engines had been blocked, namely Google and AltaVista
AltaVista
AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...
. Technorati
Technorati
Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media...
, a search engine for blogs, has been blocked.
Different search engines implement the mandated censorship in different ways. For example, the search engine Bing
Bing
Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft.Bing may also refer to:* An onomatopœia of a bell sound* Bing cherry, a variety of cherry* Bing , Chinese flatbread* Bing , a German company that manufactured toys and kitchen utensils...
is reported to censor search results from searches conducted in simplified Chinese characters (used in the PRC), but not in traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan and elsewhere).
CERNET
Several Bulletin Board SystemBulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
s in universities were closed down or restricted public access since 2004, including the SMTH BBS
SMTH BBS
Shuimu Tsinghua BBS is the first and one of the most popular bulletin board system sites among the universities in China. Hosted by Tsinghua University, it is recognized for its diversity and depth of topics....
and the YTHT
YTHT
Yi Ta Hu Tu Bulletin Board System, or YTHT BBS, began on September 17, 1999, and was built by students in Peking University, Beijing, China.In Chinese, Yi Ta Hu Tu means 'extremely messy' literally...
BBS.
Chinese social networks
Since 2010, much attention is given to the Sina Weibo instant messaging service. Although the government and media often utilize its popularity to spread ideas and monitor corruption, it is also supervised and self censored by 700 Sina censors. After the July 23 (2011) Wenzhou train accident, many fierce responses were expressed through the Weibo, criticizing official corruption, leading the government to re-consider the freedom given to Weibo users. Consequently, Sina self-censorship and aggressive content is less easily accepted.Furthermore, the government is emphasizing the danger in spreading 'false rumors' (yaoyan), making the permissive usage of Weibo and social networks a public debate. In addition, new fines and short arrests are becoming an optional punishment to whoever expresses false information through the different internet formats, as this is seen as a risk to social stability.
Local businesses
Although blocking foreign sites has received much attention in the West, this is actually only a part of the PRC effort to censor the Internet. The ability to censor content providers within mainland China is much more effective, as the ISPs and other service providers are restricting customers' actions for fear of being found legally liable for customers' conduct. The service providers have assumed an editorial role with regard to customer content, thus became publishers, and legally responsible for libel and other torts committed by customers.Although the government does not have the physical resources to monitor all Internet chat rooms and forums, the threat of being shut down has caused Internet content providers to employ internal staff, colloquially known as "big mama
Big mama
Big mama is a Chinese language neologism for an Internet censor on web bulletin board systems in the People's Republic of China.-Etymology:...
s", who stop and remove forum comments which may be politically sensitive. In Shenzhen
Shenzhen
Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
, these duties are partly taken over by a pair of police-created cartoon characters, Jingjing and Chacha
Jingjing and Chacha
Jingjing and Chacha are the cartoon mascots of the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen, People's Republic of China. Debuting on January 22, 2006, they are used to, amongst other things, inform Chinese Internet users what is and is not legal to consult or write...
, who help extend the online 'police presence' of the Shenzhen authorities. These cartoons spread across the nation in 2007 reminding internet users that they are being watched and should avoid posting 'sensitive' or 'harmful' material on the internet.
However, Internet content providers have adopted some counter-strategies. One is to post politically sensitive stories and remove them only when the government complains. In the hours or days in which the story is available online, people read it, and by the time the story is taken down, the information is already public. One notable case in which this occurred was in response to a school explosion in 2001, when local officials tried to suppress the fact the explosion resulted from children illegally producing fireworks
Fireworks
Fireworks are a class of explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. The most common use of a firework is as part of a fireworks display. A fireworks event is a display of the effects produced by firework devices...
. By the time local officials forced the story to be removed from the Internet, the news had already been widely disseminated.
In addition, Internet content providers often replace censored forum comments with white space which allows the reader to know that comments critical of the authorities had been submitted, and often to guess what they might have been.
In July 2007, the city of Xiamen
Xiamen
Xiamen , also known as Amoy , is a major city on the southeast coast of the People's Republic of China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city of Fujian province with an area of and population of 3.53 million...
announced it would ban anonymous online postings after text messages and online communications were used to rally protests against a proposed chemical plant in the city. Internet users will be required to provide proof of identity when posting messages on the more than 100,000 Web sites registered in Xiamen.
Some hotels in China are also advising internet users to obey local Chinese internet access rules by leaving a list of internet rules and guidelines near the computers. These rules, among other things, forbid linking to politically unacceptable messages, and inform internet users that if they do, they will have to face legal consequences.
In September 2007, some data centers were shut down indiscriminately for providing interactive features such as blogs and forums. CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
reports an estimate that half the interactive sites hosted in China were blocked.
International corporations
One controversial issue is whether foreign companies should supply equipment to the PRC government which may assist in the blocking of sites. Some argue that it is wrong for companies to profit from censorship including restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Others argue that equipment being supplied- from companies such as the American based Cisco SystemsCisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
Inc.- is standard Internet infrastructure equipment and that providing this sort of equipment actually aids the flow of information, and that the PRC is fully able to create its own infrastructure without Western help. By contrast, human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
argue that if companies stopped contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts, the government could be forced to change.
A similar dilemma is faced by foreign content providers such as Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
(See Shi Tao
Shi Tao
Shi Tao is a mainland Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal details to the Chinese government.-Brief history:Shi Tao...
for more information), AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
, and Skype
Skype
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...
who abide by PRC government wishes, including having internal content monitors, in order to be able to operate within mainland China. Also, in accordance with mainland Chinese laws, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
began to censor the content of its blog service Windows Live Spaces
Windows Live Spaces
Windows Live Spaces was Microsoft's blogging and social networking platform. The site was originally released in early 2004 as MSN Spaces to compete with other social networking sites, and re-launched in 2006 as a part of a shifting of community services away from the MSN brand...
, arguing that continuing to provide Internet services is more beneficial to the Chinese. Michael Anti
Michael Anti (journalist)
Jing Zhao is a Chinese journalist and political blogger, known for his posts about freedom of the press in China.Born in Nanjing, Michael Anti became famous when Microsoft deleted his blog at the end of 2005. His case made headlines around the world and contributed to ongoing debates about the...
, a Chinese journalist whose blog on Windows Live Spaces
Windows Live Spaces
Windows Live Spaces was Microsoft's blogging and social networking platform. The site was originally released in early 2004 as MSN Spaces to compete with other social networking sites, and re-launched in 2006 as a part of a shifting of community services away from the MSN brand...
was removed by Microsoft, agreed that the Chinese are better off with Windows Live Spaces than without it.
The Chinese version of MySpace, launched in April 2007, has many censorship-related differences from other international versions of the service. Discussion forums on topics such as religion and politics are absent and a filtering system that prevents the posting of content about Taiwan independence
Taiwan independence
Taiwan independence is a political movement whose goals are primarily to formally establish the Republic of Taiwan by renaming or replacing the Republic of China , form a Taiwanese national identity, reject unification and One country, two systems with the People's Republic of China and a Chinese...
, the Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
, Falun Gong, and other "inappropriate topics" has been added. Users are also given the ability to report the "misconduct" of other users for offenses including "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."
Additionally, reporters in the western media have also suggested that China's internet censorship of foreign websites may also be a means of forcing mainland Chinese users to rely on China's own e-commerce industry, thus self-insulating their economy from the dominance of international corporations.
Legal action
On 9 May 2007, Mr. Yetaai (冬劲) sued Shanghai Telecom, a sub-company of China Telecom, because one of his sites was blocked from access in China. He then took a series of steps including raising maintenance request and notarization. His lawsuit was accepted by Pu Dong Court, Shanghai. Mr. Yetaai reported it through his online diary (English). He also raised an item for online ticketing through an article on DiggDigg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
.
Liberalization of sexually oriented content
Although restrictions on political information remain strong, several sexually oriented blogs began appearing in early 2004. Women using the web aliases Muzi MeiMuzi Mei
Muzi Mei or Mu Zimei or Mu Zi Mei or Muzimei is the nom de plume of a female journalist and blogger from Guangzhou, People's Republic of China, who became a notorious household name in China in late 2003...
(木子美) and Zhuying Qingtong (竹影青瞳) wrote online diaries of their sex lives and became minor celebrities. This was widely reported and criticized in mainland Chinese news media, and several of these bloggers' sites have since been blocked in China to this day. This coincided with an artistic nude photography fad (including a self-published book by dancer Tang Jiali
Tang Jiali
Tang Jiali is a Chinese dancer and model who became a celebrity and household name in the People's Republic of China in 2003 by being the first woman to sell books of nude artistic photographs of herself since the lifting of many of the previous restrictions on distribution and sale of such...
) and the appearance of pictures of minimally clad women or even topless photos in a few mainland Chinese newspapers, magazines and websites. Many dating and "adult chat" sites, both Chinese and foreign, have been blocked. Some, however, continue to be accessible although this appears to be due more to the Chinese government's ignorance of their existence than any particular policy of leniency.
Corporate responsibility
On 7 November 2005 an alliance of investors and researchers representing 26 companies in the U.S., Europe and Australia with over US $21 billion in joint assets announced that they were urging businesses to protect freedom of expression and pledged to monitor technology companies that do business in countries violating human rights, such as China. On 21 December 2005 the UN, OSCEOrganization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...
and OAS
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
special mandates on freedom of expression called on Internet corporations to "work together ... to resist official attempts to control or restrict use of the Internet." Google finally responded when attacked by hackers rumoured to be hired by the Chinese government by threatening to pull out of China (Newsweek)
Technical efforts at breaking through
The firewall is largely ineffective at preventing the flow of information and is rather easily circumvented by determined parties by using proxy servers outside the firewall. VPN and SSHSecure Shell
Secure Shell is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that it connects via a secure channel over an insecure network: a server and a client...
connections to outside mainland China are not blocked, so circumventing all of the censorship and monitoring features of the Great Firewall of China is trivial for those who have these secure connection methods to computers outside mainland China available to them. However, disruptions of VPN services have been reported.
Since free hosting blog services like Blogger
Blogger (service)
Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...
and Wordpress.com
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a weblog hosting provider owned by Automattic which opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005 and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It is powered by the open source WordPress software...
frequently face blockage, bloggers and webmasters aiming for an audience in China often debate merits of the various paid hosting services. Some China-focused services explicitly offer to change a blog's IP address within 30 minutes if it is blocked by the authorities.
Psiphon
Psiphon
Psiphon is a web proxy designed to help Internet users securely bypass the content-filtering systems used to censor the internet by governments in places like China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Pakistan, Belarus' and others...
is a software project designed by University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
's Citizen Lab
Citizen Lab
The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Canada. Founded Professor Ronald Deibert, the Citizen Lab focuses on advanced research and development at the intersection of digital media, global security, and human...
under the direction of Professor Ronald Deibert
Ronald Deibert
Ronald J. Deibert is professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research and development "hothouse" working at the...
, Director of the Citizen Lab. Psiphon is a circumvention technology that works through social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
s of trust and is designed to help Internet users bypass content-filtering systems set up by governments.
"We're aiming at giving people access to sites like Wikipedia," a free, user-maintained online encyclopedia, and other information and news sources, Michael Hull, psiphon's lead engineer, told CBC News Online.
The Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
website is blocked although the Tor network is not, making Tor (in conjunction with Privoxy
Privoxy
Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers before the page is rendered by the browser. Privoxy is a "privacy enhancing proxy", filtering Web pages and removing advertisements...
) an effective tool for circumvention of the censorship controls if one can acquire it. Tor maintains a public list of entry nodes, so the authorities could easily block it if they had the inclination. According to the sections 6.4 and 7.9, Tor is vulnerable to timing analysis by Chinese authorities, so it allows a breach of anonymity. Thus for the moment, Tor allows uncensored downloads and uploads, although no guarantee can be made with regard to freedom from repercussions.
Since 25 September 2009, about 80% of the public relays are blocked by IP address and TCP port combination but Tor users are still connecting to the network through non-public relays (bridges).
As an alternative to Tor, there are various HTTP/HTTPS
Https
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server...
Tunnel Services.
It was common in the past to use Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's cache feature to view blocked websites. However, this feature of Google seems to be under some level of blocking, as access is now erratic and does not work for blocked websites. Currently the block is mostly circumvented by using proxy servers outside the firewall, and is not difficult to carry out for those determined to do so. Some well-known proxy servers have also been blocked.
Some Chinese citizens used the Google mirror elgooG
ElgooG
elgooG is the literal mirror image of the engine searcher; not only is all of its content a reversal of Google, the search terms must also be written in reverse in order to yield the desired results...
after China blocked Google. It is believed that elgooG survived the Great Firewall of China
Golden Shield Project
The Golden Shield Project , colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall of China is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security division of the government of the People's Republic of China...
because the firewall operators thought that elgooG was not a fully functional version of Google. (This information is out of date, referring to an early blockade of Google in 2002)
There are several techniques (websites and programs) that may be used to browse blocked sites. These include:
- Ultrareach Ultrasurf also scans for various government and commercial websites from the user's computer, and may be used to monitor dissidents.
- GollumGollum browserGollum browser is a web application designed to browse Wikipedia in an easier way than directly using the web browser. Links external to Wikipedia are opened in the user's regular browser. Gollum is opened from a regular browser and makes a window that puts the Wikipedia search bar on the toolbar...
- picidae
- FreegateFreegateFreegate is software that enables internet users from mainland China, Syria, Iran, Vietnam and United Arab Emirates, among others, to view websites blocked by their governments. The program takes advantage of a range of open proxies, which allow users to penetrate firewalls used to block web sites....
- Garden and GTunnel by Garden NetworksGarden NetworksGarden Networks is a not-for-profit organization registered in Canada, that specializes in providing Internet anti-censorship/Internet privacy products for free. The full name of Garden Networks is Garden Networks for Freedom of Information.-History:...
Societal and cultural evasion
The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures, initially a humorous hoaxHoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
, has become a popular and widespread internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
in China. These hoaxes, ten in number, reportedly originated in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship and have become an icon of citizens' resistance to censorship.
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television
State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television is an executive branch under the State Council of the People's Republic of China...
issued a directive on 30 March 2009 to highlight 31 categories of content prohibited online, including violence, pornography and content which may "incite ethnic discrimination or undermine social stability". Many netizens believe the instruction follows the official embarrassment over the "Grass Mud Horse
Grass Mud Horse
The Grass Mud Horse or Cao Ní Ma is a Chinese Internet meme widely used as a form of symbolic defiance of the widespread Internet censorship in China. It is a play on the Mandarin language words "fuck your mother", and one of the so-called 10 mythical creatures created in a hoax article on Baidu...
" and the "River Crab
River crab (Internet slang)
River crab and Harmonious/Harmonize/Harmonization are Internet slangs created by Chinese netizens in reference to Internet censorship or the other censorship of China...
". Industry observers believe that the move was designed to stop the spread of parodies or other comments on politically sensitive issues in the runup to the anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square protests
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
.
See also
- Blocking of Wikipedia by the People's Republic of China
- Censorship in the People's Republic of ChinaCensorship in the People's Republic of ChinaCensorship in the People's Republic of China is implemented or mandated by the PRC's ruling party, the Communist Party of China . The special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau have their own legal systems and are largely self-governing, so these censorship policies do not apply...
- Cyber defamation lawCyber defamation lawCyber Defamation is a crime conducted in cyberspace, usually through the Internet, with the intention of defaming others. The cyber defamation law that the Korean government tries to make is intended to capture such criminal activities by allowing police to crack down on hateful comments without...
- Digital divide in the People's Republic of China
- History of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of ChinaHistory of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of ChinaA history of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China has existed since Internet access in the People's Republic of China became widespread....
- Human rights in the People's Republic of ChinaHuman rights in the People's Republic of ChinaHuman rights in the People's Republic of China are a matter of dispute between the Chinese government, other countries, international NGOs, and dissidents inside the country. Organizations such as the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have accused the Chinese...
- ICP licenseICP licenseICP license is a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to permit China-based websites to operate in China...
- International Freedom of Expression ExchangeInternational Freedom of Expression ExchangeThe International Freedom of Expression eXchange , founded in 1992, is a global network of around 90 non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression....
, promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression - Internet in the People's Republic of ChinaInternet in the People's Republic of ChinaThe first connection of the mainland of the People's Republic of China with the Internet was established on between ICA Beijing and Karlsruhe University in Germany, under the leadership of Prof. Werner Zorn and Prof. Wang Yunfeng. Since then the Internet in China has grown to host the largest base...
- Jingjing and ChachaJingjing and ChachaJingjing and Chacha are the cartoon mascots of the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen, People's Republic of China. Debuting on January 22, 2006, they are used to, amongst other things, inform Chinese Internet users what is and is not legal to consult or write...
, the cartoon mascots of the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen, China - Media of the People's Republic of ChinaMedia of the People's Republic of ChinaMedia of the People's Republic of China primarily consists of television, newspapers, radio, and magazines. Since 2000, the Internet has also emerged as an important communications medium....
- River crab (Internet slang)River crab (Internet slang)River crab and Harmonious/Harmonize/Harmonization are Internet slangs created by Chinese netizens in reference to Internet censorship or the other censorship of China...
, a euphemism for censorship in China - Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures (Internet meme)Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures (Internet meme)The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures , alternatively Ten Baidu Deities, was initially a humorous hoax from the interactive encyclopedia Baidu Baike which became a popular and widespread Internet meme in the People's Republic of China in early 2009....
- Internet censorship around the worldInternet censorshipInternet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
- Internet censorship in North Korea
- Yan Xiaoling – Fan Yanqiong caseYan Xiaoling – Fan Yanqiong caseThe Yan Xiaoling – Fan Yanqiong case , a.k.a. Fujian Netizen Case , occurred from June 2009 through April 2010 in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, People's Republic of China...
- Internet freedom
External links
Official websites- Cyberpolice.cn (网络违法犯罪举报网站) – Ministry of Public Security P.R. China Information & Network Security -
Filter circumvention software
- Free software to get past the censorship in China
- How to Bypass Internet Censorship, also known by the titles: Bypassing Internet Censorship or Circumvention Tools, a FLOSSFlossFloss may refer to:* Dental floss, used to clean teeth* Embroidery thread, machine or hand-spun yarn for embroidery* Fairy floss or candyfloss, alternative names for cotton candy* Rousong, i.e. meat floss-Computing:...
Manual, 10 March 2011, 240 pp.
Analysis
- Tool for keeping track of websites and searches that are blocked in mainland China
- Insightfull article about the impact of censorship on Chinese businesses
- WebSitePulse.com – Website Test behind the Great Firewall of China
- ViewDNS.info – Chinese Firewall Test – Tests if a website is accessible from within mainland China
- Translation of the Filtered Key Words in Chinese Cyberspace 24 June 2005
- How to get uncensored internet access in China
- Internet Enemies: China, Reporters Without BordersReporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
- Freedom on the Net 2011: China-Freedom HouseFreedom HouseFreedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
: Freedom on the Net Report