An Inside Look at the Great Firewall of China

alphadogg writes "An interview with James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has experienced 'The Great Firewall of China' firsthand, an experience people from around the world will share this summer when the Olympics comes to that country. Based in Beijing, Fallows has researched the underlying technology that the Chinese use for Internet censorship. One good thing to know: With VPNs and proxies, you can get around it pretty easily." Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?

Comments

Just more corporate pandering...

[tjstork]

But, eventually, corporate pandering will lead to greater economic freedom for the Chinese, and then, ultimately, greater political freedom.

I don't mean to sound elitist, but most Chinese people in the USA that I have talked to have basically said that yes, while more human rights and freedom of speech would be nice, the problem is that the Chinese peasant class is so uneducated and so poor that there is a huge risk of total social chaos if China adopts the Glasnost route. They want to avoid a Soviet - collapse style meltdown.

Re:Just more corporate pandering...

[Echnin]

No, no no. If all you want is for the CCP government to go down, then certainly that is what would work the fastest. However, the chaotic situation that would arise would be an economic disaster taking away the wealth gained by normal Chinese. It is a popular misconception in the West that the CCP is incompetent and corrupt and only exists for the sake of party members, but the fact is that even in a one-party state there is politics, and there is discussion and debate, and the system works. It's authoritarian, sure, and it's a mistake not to allow freer public discussion (even with such, I believe the government would still have great support of the people), but the system is not tyrannic, and while far from as democratic as Western democracies we must remember that there are differences between Western democracies, notably with a trainwreck of a two-party plutocratic system in the USA. The Chinese government has done a lot more good for the environment than the US government has, for example, with limits on car emissions that would be impossible for the US to meet, and energy efficiency markings for electronics. Would Americans not be offended if Swiss people claimed that the American political system needed to collapse? Anyway, you're very uninformed about the current state of the world economy if you believe that the West could cause the Chinese economy to collapse without taking an enourmous hit itself.

Reading posts like this, and seeing hundreds of Chinese protest outside Tous Les Jours, a bakery chain here in Beijing, because they thought it was French (hint: it's Korean!) just makes me wonder how diplomacy between different countries ever works. It's all a bunch of chauvinistic cheerleading for whatever country you happened to be born in, with stretching of and invention of facts and a complete disregard of the views of the other part. Chinese people know they don't have a proper democracy. They don't mind this fact as much as Westerners want them to. Now I'll go back to try to convince Chinese people of the benefits of Western democracy and that the Western media is not a single-faceted entity/hate machine directed at discrediting China, but in fact allows for having several different opinions...

Back on the subject of the Great Firewall, I'm posting from behind it, and I don't know any internet user here who does NOT know how to activate a proxy of some sort for the sites that aren't available.

Re:Good luck

[LynnwoodRooster]

Well then, I guess China isn't smart enough. Proxies work great over in China; it's how I can access anything I want, watch my Netflix movies (proxy in the US, Netflix doesn't know where I really am), read the BBC, etc.

Little Known Fact

[ShawnCplus]

Little known fact is that the Great Firewall of China is the only slap in the face to freedom that can be seen from outer space.

Re:Incredible

[pkalkul]

In their recent book, Who Controls the Internet, law professors Timothy Wu and Jack Goldsmith have a nice section on China. Their argument is that effective control does not require total control. Yes, it is possible for internet users in China to circumvent government controls, but as long as these controls work well enough for the average user -- who as other commentators have noted, have other concerns and priorities -- then the Chinese government has effective control. An educated Western user who has certain expectations for the internet, and who has the technical resources necessary to access proxies, can perhaps (relatively) easily bypass government controls. But that does not mean that these controls, combined with logging and fear of reprisals, are not very effective.

And, of course, China is a large market for many firms, and therefore the Chinese government has leverage to exert their influence over a set of intermediaries -- Yahoo and Google, for example -- to make their control effective (again, not perfect).

Re:Good luck

[LS]

What a bunch of random bullshit! You apparently pulled a bunch of guesses based on misconceptions out of your ass, and the moderators appear to have agreed.

I've lived in China for over 3 years, using the same SSH tunnel the entire time. In addition, there are too many people in China to monitor their browsing habits. What they actually care about is what you are saying (e.g. on blogs), and then only if your words get more than a certain amount of traffic.

Enough with the misinformation. Just because you speculate that something is done because it would be the "smart" thing to do, doesn't mean it's happening.

LS