Internet in China
China's first foray into the global cyberspace was an email (not TCP/IP based and thus technically not internet) sent on 20 September 1987 to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, reading, "Across the Great Wall, towards the rest of the world" (simplified Chinese: 越过长城，走向世界; traditional Chinese: 越過長城，走向世界; pinyin: Yuèguò chángchéng, zǒuxiàng shìjiè).
[6]: 3 In 2004, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology began the Connecting Every Village Project which promoted the use of telecommunications and internet in rural China.
Beginning in late 2009, the program began building rural telecenters each of which had at least one telephone, computer, and internet connectivity.
[citation needed] Generally statistics on the number of mobile internet users in China show a significant slump in the growth rate between 2008 and 2010, with a small peak in the next two years.
[13] Beginning in 2019, US (SpaceX Starlink)[14] and UK (OneWeb, 2020)[15][16] private companies had begun fielding large internet satellite constellations with global coverage; however China does not intend to license non-Chinese technical solutions for satellite broadband within the jurisdiction of Chinese law.
[18] The first four major national networks, namely CSTNET, ChinaNet, CERNET and CHINAGBN, are the "backbone" of the mainland Chinese internet.
[11]: 143 In 2009, China amended its Criminal Law to create a low threshold for the prosecution of malicious cybercrimes and illegal data sales.
[11]: 131 Generally, China advocates for internet sovereignty and tends to prioritize cybersecurity more than personal data protection.
[11]: 121 Chinese policymakers became increasingly concerned about the risk of cyberattacks following the 2010s global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden, which demonstrated extensive United States intelligence activities in China.
[11]: 131 Before the 2020-2021 Xi Jinping administration reform spree, the regulatory environment for internet companies was relatively lax because the government sought to encourage the development of the big data economy.
[11]: 131 It imposes significant data localization requirements, in a response to the extraterritorial reach of the United States CLOUD Act or similar foreign laws.
[28] As a result of public outcry over parent-child online gaming conflicts, the government issued legislation in the early 2000s.
[29]: 175 In 2009, the government requested that to aid parents in monitoring what children were doing on the Internet, "Green Dam Youth Escort" software be pre-installed on personal computers sold in most parts of China (excluding Special Administrative Regions).
[6]: 76 All websites that operate in China with their own domain name must have an ICP license from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
[27]: 43 Search engine ChinaSo.com, jointly managed by Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily, is active as of 2024 but has few users.
Bulletin boards on portals or elsewhere, chat rooms, instant messaging groups, blogs are very active, while photo-sharing and social networking sites are growing rapidly.
[6]: 146 China is one of the most restricted countries in the world in terms of internet, but these constraints have directly contributed to the success of local Chinese social media sites.
[27]: 43 China has endeavored to offer a number of online mapping services and allows the dissemination of geographic information within the country.
GIS was originally a tool for cartographers, geographers and other types of specialists to store, manage, present and analyze spatial data.
This system restricted minors from playing more than 3 hours a day and required Identification (ID) checking in order to verify you are of age.
[45] Later in 2019, the Chinese government announced in November that gamers under the age of 18 would be banned from playing video games between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
[46] As of 2021, the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) further restricted rules limiting playtime for under-18s to one hour per day from 8p.m.
The governmental authorities not only block website content but also monitor the Internet access of individuals; such measures have attracted the nickname The Great Firewall of China.
[49] Users may circumvent all of the censorship and monitoring of the Great Firewall if they have a secure VPN or SSH connection method to a computer outside mainland China.
[53] In 2009, motivated in part by its desire to prevent color revolutions, China banned Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
[54] By blocking major international internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, the Great Firewall has contributed to the development of domestic alternatives including Baidu, Renren, Youku, and Weibo.
[6]: 8 The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures, initially a humorous hoax, became a popular and widespread internet meme in China.
[55][56] These ten hoaxes reportedly originated in response to increasing online censorship and have become an icon of Chinese internet users' resistance to it.
Many Chinese internet users 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.
