Testing the Great Firewall: internet censorship in China

China’s Great Firewall – the bank of filters designed to keep uninvited information out of the country’s cyberspace – may not be the impenetrable barrier it was once considered. Recent reports have suggested that the software designed to filter out porn, democracy and other undesirable topics is technologically erratic but psychologically effective. Its most powerful effect is in convincing people that their Government is watching them.

On a recent trip to Beijing, I had a chance put the theory to the test. My survey was neither scientific nor comprehensive, but it did seem to confirm the findings of the American academics.

Sitting in my hotel room, I tried to access a selection of news websites, as well as those devoted to topics such as Falun Gong and Taiwanese Independence, which the Chinese Government regards as damaging to the security of the state. The results were as follows:

Times Online: available, including stories that reflected badly on China

BBC News: blocked

BBC Weather: available

BBC homepage: available. The site search returns news stories, including those that portray China in a bad light, and displays their headlines and an introduction, but clicking on any of the stories brings up an error page.

Deutsche Welle: blocked

CNN: available

ABC News: available

Google News
– search for China: available
– search for China democracy: blocked
– search for China human rights: blocked
– search for China human: blocked
– search for Taiwan independence: available
– search for Taiwan democracy: available

Google search engine
– search for China: available
– search for Falun Gong: blocked
– search for Tiananmen: available

Wikipedia: blocked (in any language)

YouTube: available

Facebook: available

Falun Gong: all sites found through a selection of search engines were blocked

Taiwanese Independence: all sites found through a selection of search engines were blocked

Tiananmen-related sites: some were available, some were available but images were blocked and others were blocked completely

Sites referencing the Guns ‘n’ Roses album Chinese Democracy: available

Some patterns did emerge: both the BBC and Deutsche Welle have Chinese-language services, and the Chinese Government is much more anxious to block information that is accessible to its vast number of non-English speakers. However, it seems to take a harder line with Falun Gong, blocking English-language sites too.

The authorities appear less sure about what to do with Web 2.0 sites. The complete embargo on Wikipedia seems strange, especially since YouTube appears to be open to all. It was even possible to find and watch BBC reports of the Tiananmen Square massacre by typing in the Chinese characters for ‘Tiananmen’ (taken from a translation website).

But would many Chinese people want to take the risk? I would guess not, given that I felt slightly nervous myself despite having the privileged and relatively protected status of a Western journalist. Logically I knew that the Chinese Government would find it very hard to monitor every bit of web traffic in the country, and that it would have little interest in my attempts to view Falun Gong’s UK homepage – but I still waited until the last day of my visit, after I had done all the interviews I needed to do, and immediately before heading to the airport.

There was one category of material – pornography – that I didn’t include in my ad hoc survey. The reason was that I was using a company laptop, and while the IT department of The Times may be more broadminded than the Chinese Government, it has its limits, or at least I think it does. Self-censorship, it seems, isn’t uniquely Chinese.

Comments

[Al Day]

Very insightful last sentence. How true, how true.

[Sam]

Hi, Ive been able to access some of the information that you posted, i dont know why they are blocking it because most chinese people know about these so called blocked information pages anyway.
Its just a hindrance to us westerners who want to keep up to date on the news from back home.
Chinese know all the bad thing their government have done, no firewall can keep that information away from them.

[David]

Last year I was in China at several internet cafes. Just before leaving I'd do searches such as yours with similar results.

But I was stumped finding info on the Three Gorges Damm Project - so I had my mother email it to me from Canada.

[Jimbo]

Could you not just a proxy lol?

[iewgnem]

I find it quite interesting you assume the average Chinese would fear their goverment as much as you do. Of course you feel nervious, you have been brought up believing the Chinese government is an evil Big Brother takes people away at night.
If you ask the average Chinese I think you will find they, well don't really care, because everyone short of a visiting paranoid westerner knows nobody really enforce those laws in China.

To put it this way, I've seen friends talking about Tienanmen with a police officer on the street, that's because, well, they don't live in the same China as the one you've been imagining all your life.

[Angry Chinese Driver]

Great article!

The funny thing is, most Chinese (who aren't hackers, etc.) won't ever read this article, which benefits them the most.

[Daniel Keeping]

Facebook is being blocked actually.
The group 'I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1970s/80s'
Is blocked, none of the photographs on this group of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong, or how nice the place was in the 1980s before the communists ruined the place can be viewed in mainland china.
They must be trying to hide how badly the place has been run for ten years.

Daniel Keeping
Hong Kong Resident since 1981