The Great Firewall of China

 

Stretching as far as the eye can see, the Great Firewall of China is as inconvenient, seemingly impenetrable border which separates the People’s Republic of China from the World Wide Web. The Great Firewall is the tongue-in-cheek term used to refer to the stringent regulations that prevent access to certain websites and applications in mainland China, banning everything from coverage of Tiananmen Square to Winne the Pooh (Clark, 2018). SARs, such as Hong Kong and Macau, sit on the Western side of this wall but there is speculation on how closely internet traffic is monitored in these regions (Wells, 2016).

“If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.” 

— A quote from Deng Xiaopeng which is renowned as being the notion behind which the Great Firewall was built.

 

 

China had access to the internet for only four years before the Great Firewall was installed in 1998 (Chun Chew, 2018). During these four years of online mobility, 772 million Chinese nationals found their way online. The threat of Western ideologies disrupting the Chinese Communist Party’s bubble and Western enterprises encroaching in national markets, prompted the creation of the most secretive and powerful firewall in the history of the web (Chun Chew, 2018).

The Great Firewall is but a single component of the Golden Shield Project (the Chinese really know how to name things…). The Golden Shield Project was initiated under pretences of improving national security, but soon features of censorship and surveillance were at the core of this rotten apple. No traffic going in or out of China is private and free from threat of manipulation. Another creatively named and fascinating element of this story is the Great Cannon. The Great Cannon was discovered by the Western World after the Chinese government’s attack on Github (Hern, 2015). It was found that, in a step away from passive censorship, Chinese technology now has the ability to rewrite the contents of the internet in real time. It is presumed that the Chinese government are using advanced artificial intelligent to determine what traffic to hijack and modify before letting in enter or exit their borders (Hong, 2017). This has massive implications for cyber warfare, as it allows the Chinese government to perform more sophisticated and rapid censorship than the manual enforcement that employed hundreds of thousands of civilian workers for many years (Chun Chew, 2018).

In November 2018, I got the opportunity to travel to mainland China for a week-long competition in the small city of Xiamen. While sorting complicated Visa applications and vaccinations, I considered downloading and setting up a cheap and easy VPN for my travels. The looming reality that I was about to be watched for a week had an interesting effect on my decisions. Unknowingly, I began to participate in a type of self-censorship. The only app I used during the week was WeChat (China’s answer to WhatsApp), and I was constantly aware of what I was saying, with fears of listening ears and drawing attention to myself. The use of VPNs fools visitors into thinking they have conned the Chinese government. While all sorts of banned sites can be accessed via VPN, China have shown that they do in fact have full control over these ladders of communication, by banning them during sensitive times, namely the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017 (Uthmani, 2017). Visitors to the country may tweet and snap happily, thinking their personal VPN has pulled a fast one on the censorship that has crippled a nation’s freedom of speech, but I believe this is more a case of the Chinese government teasing travellers in a carrot-on-a-string style.

During a week of radio silence from Facebook, Twitter, BBC News or Google I noticed a couple of key things about the Great Firewall of China. Primarily, that it is highly inconvenient. Being unable to use Google Translate, Google Maps or Trip Advisor makes travelling in a city that is not built for Western tourists nearly impossible. I ate way more chicken feet than I would have if I had have had Google Translate! Secondly, that every common app that we use in our day to day lives has its own Chinese branded rip-off edition. At first, I found the blatant attempts at copying humorous, Twitter became _, Google became Baidu, etc, etc. But I began to wonder if these apps were indeed rip-offs of their Western counterparts or whether the apps we are familiar with are actually “borrowed” ideas from Chinese creators. Social media and the constant sharing of information allows the Chinese government to observe and learn more about their people. This made me question whether our western freedom to use these apps and methods of communication is indeed “freedom” or leans closer towards “conformance”.

Finally, I observed that self-censorship is perhaps a more effective mechanism for quieting a population than any technological border could ever be. I noticed myself refraining from using full names, making negative comments or discussing the Chinese people I had met on my travels on the messenger app. Some researchers claim that the reported reach and strength of the Firewall is fictional, and its true power lies in its ability to make user’s feel like they are being watched (UC Davis, 2007). From one week of feeling like I was under the microscope, I gained a small insight into how the fear of Big Brother can shape the opinions and mindset of those who hail from countries of extreme censorship.

The Great Firewall has cropped up in the news a lot over recently, as reports have emerged that Russia aim to implement their own version of “Chinanet” (Parker, 2017). At the moment, it appears the main barrier stopping Russia from completely censoring the flow of information into and out of their country is there technical inability to do so. China curated their wall over a number of decades and huge amounts of Government investment. Equally worryingly, some reports claim that India (Tech Wire Asia, 2017) are similarly cracking down on Internet traffic. These movements by other countries have been encouraged by Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Jinping states that China’s “cyber sovereignty” is a strength of the nation and highlights the benefits that these borders can have (Mai, 2018) (Kodaka, 2017).

These borders of country-wide firewalls lead to national echo-chambers. They prevent the freedom of sharing of information and the ability for communities to challenge their leaders and the leaders of other countries. Seeing this infamous technological border up close has given me a new appreciation of the power that flourishing online communities can bring. If these borders of censorship succeed in countries other than China, it threatens the original vision and purpose of the Internet itself.

 

 

 

 

 

References:

UC Davis. (2007). China’s Eye on the Internet. [online] Available at: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/chinas-eye-internet/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Chun Chew, W. (2018). How It Works: Great Firewall of China. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@chewweichun/how-it-works-great-firewall-of-china-c0ef16454475 [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Clark, G. (2018). Quicktake – The Great Firewall of China. [online] Bloomberg.com. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/great-firewall-of-china [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Hern, A. (2015). ‘Great Cannon of China’ turns internet users into weapon of cyberwar. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/13/great-cannon-china-internet-users-weapon-cyberwar [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Hong, B. (2017). China’s ‘Great Firewall’ Now Deletes Messages in Real Time. [online] The Daily Beast. Available at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/chinas-great-firewall-now-deletes-messages-in-real-time [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Tech Wire Asia. (2017). Is India erecting Asia’s next Great Firewall? – Tech Wire Asia. [online] Available at: https://techwireasia.com/2017/09/india-erecting-asia-next-great-firewall/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Kodaka, W. (2017). China toughens web censorship, encourages others to follow. [online] Nikkei Asian Review. Available at: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/China-toughens-web-censorship-encourages-others-to-follow [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Mai, J. (2018). Xi renews ‘cyber sovereignty’ call at China’s internet event of the year. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2122683/xi-jinping-renews-cyber-sovereignty-call-chinas-top [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Parker, E. (2017). Russia Is Trying to Copy China’s Approach to Internet Censorship. [online] Slate Magazine. Available at: https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/russia-is-trying-to-copy-chinas-internet-censorship.html [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Uthmani, O. (2017). Why you should care about China’s VPN crackdown. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/why-you-should-care-about-chinas-vpn-crackdown-82222 [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].

Wells, R. (2016). Does Hong Kong have the Great Firewall now that’s it’s part of China?. [online] Quora.com. Available at: https://www.quora.com/Does-Hong-Kong-have-the-Great-Firewall-now-thats-its-part-of-China [Accessed 17 Feb. 2019].