Internet censorship in China

[20] The political and ideological background of Internet censorship is considered to be one of Deng Xiaoping's favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open a window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.

Nonetheless, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wished to protect its values and political ideas by "swatting flies" of other ideologies,[22] with a particular emphasis on suppressing movements that could potentially threaten the stability of the country.

[27] On 6 December 2002, 300 members in charge of the Golden Shield project came from 31 provinces and cities across China to participate in a four-day inaugural "Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System".

For example, The New York Times was unblocked when reporters in a private interview with CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin specifically asked about the block and he replied that he would look into the matter.

[51] Chairing the 2018 China Cyberspace Governance Conference on 20 and 21 April 2018, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, committed to "fiercely crack down on criminal offenses including hacking, telecom fraud, and violation of citizens' privacy.

[80] The Great Firewall has used numerous methods to block content, including IP dropping, DNS spoofing, deep packet inspection for finding plain text signatures within the handshake to throttle protocols,[82] and more recently active probing.

[87] A notice[88] 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 Youth Escort software.

[92][93] However, Xinhua commented that "support [for Green Dam] largely stems from end users, opposing opinions primarily come from a minority of media outlets and businesses.

The blocking focused mainly on any form of collective action (anything from false rumors driving riots to protest organizers to large parties for fun), pornography, and criticism of the censors.

[125] After the 2011 Wenzhou train collision, the government started emphasizing the danger in spreading 'false rumours' (yaoyan), making the permissive usage of Weibo and social networks a public debate.

[131] However, a study by American researchers of 13.2 billion Weibo blog posts over the period 2009–2013 found that many sensitive topics were discussed, including on ethnic conflict, political scandals, and protests.

[148] Moreover, a large number of netizens from China claimed that they were unable to access numerous Western web services such as Twitter, Hotmail, and Flickr in the days leading up to and during the anniversary.

[152] In 2013, Chinese netizens used subtle and sarcastic Internet memes to criticize the government and to bypass censorship by creating and posting humorous pictures or drawings resembling the Tank Man photo on Weibo.

[153] On Twitter, Hu Jia, a Beijing-based AIDS activist, asked netizens in mainland China to wear black T-shirts on 4 June to oppose censorship and to commemorate the date.

"[154] According to Chinese studies expert Johan Lagerkvist, scholars Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau argue that this culture of satire is a weapon of resistance against authority.

[155] Academic writer Linda Hutcheon argues that some people, however, may view satirical language that is used to criticise the government as "complicity", which can "reinforce rather than subvert conservative attitudes".

[158] For example, the Ministry of Information Technology's plan to preinstall mandatory censoring software called Green Dam Youth Escort on computers failed after popular online opposition against it in 2009, the year of the 20th anniversary of the protest.

The Cyberspace Administration of China mandated that digital platforms increase their content moderation teams to erase any mentions of tools that might allow users to bypass censorship, aiming to cut off any pathways to openly discussing the protests through unfiltered internet channels.

Sina Weibo, a major social media platform, blocked search results related to the “pandemic in Beijing” and prevented live conversations about the consequences of lifting lockdown measures.

[176]: 306  Following the 2010 boat collision in the disputed islands, the Chinese government censored related keywords online and shut down internet chatrooms addressing the issues in an effort to decrease bilateral tension between the two countries.

[179] On 13 March 2018, China's CCTV incidentally showed Yicai's Liang Xiangyi apparently rolling her eyes in disgust at a long-winded and canned media question during the widely watched National People's Congress.

In an April 2006 e-mail panel discussion Rebecca MacKinnon, who reported from China for nine years as a Beijing bureau chief for CNN, said: "... many bloggers said he [Anti] was a necessary sacrifice so that the majority of Chinese can continue to have an online space to express themselves as they choose.

[212] In 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposed new rules that would punish individuals and institutions for helping internet users bypass the 'Great Firewall', further attempting to restrict VPN usage.

[231] Tor now primarily functions in China using Snowflake and meeks which works via front-end proxies hosted on Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to obfuscate the information coming to and from the source and destination, it is a type of pluggable transport.

Deleted sites have "been harmonized", indicating CCP general secretary Hu Jintao's Internet censorship lies under the larger idea of creating a "Socialist Harmonious Society".

[235] Rupert Murdoch famously proclaimed that advances in communications technology posed an "unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere"[236] and Ai Weiwei argued that the Chinese "leaders must understand it's not possible for them to control the Internet unless they shut it off".

[237] However, Nathan Freitas, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and technical adviser to the Tibet Action Institute, says "There's a growing sense within China that widely used VPN services that were once considered untouchable are now being touched."

In June 2015 Jaime Blasco, a security researcher at AlienVault in Silicon Valley, reported that hackers, possibly with the assistance of the Chinese government, had found ways to circumvent the most popular privacy tools on the Internet: virtual private networks, or VPNs, and Tor.

As long as the users are logged into one of China's top web services such as Baidu, QQ, Taobao, Sina, Sohu, and Ctrip the hackers can identify them and access their personal information, even if they are using Tor or a VPN.

[244] According to the BBC, local Chinese businesses such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, some of the world's largest Internet enterprises, benefited from the way China has blocked international rivals from the market, encouraging domestic competition.