Everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China. But, have you ever heard of the Great Firewall of China?
Everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China. Some say that it’s even visible from the moon. Tourist love to visit this great monument and pose for photographs on it.
But, have you ever heard of the Great Firewall of China?
Photo by author
Great Firewall of China
Very few people living in the 21st century have heard of the Great Firewall of China.
In 2009, 300 million Chinese can access the Internet. They can read anything, comment on any site if the site allows it and communicate with anyone else on chat lines and other forums. 72% of Internet users in China are under 30. E-business in Shanghai alone is a US$ 2,5 billion industry. The government sees much potential danger and wants to protect Internet users from fraud, identity theft (phising), cyberterrorism and other crimes.
Keeping control over such a vital global network is no easy task. Already in 1998 the US$ 800 million Golden Shield Project was launched to give Beijing government some control of all information networks in China. About 30 000 people work directly on this project.
Currently China-based Web sites cannot link to overseas news Web sites or carry news from overseas media without separate approval. Only “licensed print publishers” have the authority to bring out news on-line. By law Chinese officials have full access to any kind of information about Internet users from Internet service providers. Any information that endangers national security, is detrimental to the honour of the state, undermines social stability or the state’s policy towards religion is illegal in China.
Google Conforms to Chinese Government Control
Google agreed to censor itself by allowing Chinese users from China to use Google only after some content deemed unsuitable by Beijing government have been filtered out.
Wikipedia has often been banned and the ban lifted many times over the years.
Blogging in China
50 million bloggers keep 100 million blogs in China.
In order to control the phenomenon the government wants blog users to register under their real name. To help bloggers, the Internet Society of China has guidelines for bloggers in China.
Dissident Sues Yahoo and Google
In 2008, Guo Quan a Chinese university professor founded a democratic opposition party. He was promptly dismissed from office. Now he plans to sue Yahoo and Google in the United States for having blocked his name from search results in China.
Does this system have the capability of reducing the flood of spam e-mails that are so annoying?
February 19th, 2009 at 2:11 am
Everything is big in China, so is this. On the other hand there is the Echelon project in the West too.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:54 am
Didn’t know that those things were happening in china!
February 19th, 2009 at 4:37 am
This I never knew, it’s quite amazing how far some people go to “protect” their people. Thanks for the information.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:27 am
In some respects China is very lax with what people do on the internet like allowing plagiarism and bots to flourish but if the government sees a threat to themselves they are ridiculously tough.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:51 am
These facts are amazing.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Very informative article. Hope every nation could do this for its people.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Cool stuff. I didn’t know about this.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I had never even considered such a thing could or would exist. I can’t comprehend a censored internet. On the other hand, if it would eliminate the high volume of spam emails, it might not be all bad.
This was really interesting. Thanks.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
This is a really an eye-opener.. but there will always be some hackers that can breach any firewall, the Chinese just don`t know it yet.
February 20th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Well, to control their people they have to control the internet but once Chinese people knows some of the scambug of the internet—i guess the government of China would break the FireWall in China..nice stuff…
February 21st, 2009 at 12:36 pm
hi…. very interesting article
February 21st, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Good new information. I like this.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
A very effective hook, amazing. I love the title. Keep it going!
Rohan
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
That was very interesting information you provided. Thanks for posting!!
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
It seems an impossible job to control the whole internet. I don’t think I would want it tried here.Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Good story. Didn’t know about this. But I keep on wondering how long can the Chinese authorities keep this game up?
February 27th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Does anyone really believe that they can control the INternet? Good article.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:40 am
Good information. The Internet needs to be controlled when you think of all the spam and malware, but censoring what people should read is a dangerous practice.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Very interersting info. I didn’ know about this. Thanks.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
China firewall is lame – use Freedur.com to bypass it. You can bypass China Great Firewall and access youtube.com and all other sites which are blocked.