China Digital Times

China news tagged with: GFW (17)

• Web Inventor: China Will Relax Censorship

  

  On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the Internet, discussed Google in China and gave an optimistic perspective of the role of the Internet in China. From the Times:

  Speaking about the dispute between Google and China, Sir Tim said: “I think that openness increases steadily.

  “Every time you open it, the genie comes out of the bottle and it’s very difficult to put it [back] in the bottle.”

  He said he expected that countries such as China, which fiercely moderate some items online, would eventually open up, even if it will take a long time.

  “The internet has a tradition of bit by bit increasing openness,” he said.

  “It tends not to go backwards … [but] a government that is used to working with an uninformed citizenry might take a while to move to a position where the citizens are informed.”

  » Read more
  • January 31, 2010 10:57 PM

• C.A. Yeung : The Will of Heaven Once Again Confuses the CCP! (Updated)

  

  From the Under the Jacaranda Tree Blog:

  As I am writing this blog post, millions of netizens in China are celebrating the unblocking of their favourite websites, including Youtube, Picasa, Bloggers, etc. Many of these sites have been blocked since late 2008 as a part of a Chinese government sanctioned anti-vulgarity campaign.

  Messages posted on Twitters suggest that blockages to Internet access have been lifted in Dalian, Changchun, Wuhan, Chongqing, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Beijing and Guangzhou.

  It is not clear why or to what extent the blockage has been lifted.

  Update: The outage of the GFW was temporary, according to reports from inside China, where Internet users can no longer access blocked sites. See this post from Danwei.

  » Read more
  • January 3, 2010 4:33 PM

• Mengqin (猛禽): Five Years of the Chinese Blogger Conference

  

  Mengqin (猛禽) is a long-time technology blogger. He wrote the following post on his Mengqin Hexie (Aggressive Birds and River Crabs) blog, translated by CDT’s Paulina Hartono:

  Two days ago, I listened to a recording of “Bold Blogging” (“中国猛博”) from this year’s CNBloggerCon, and then compared it to a portion of a recording I made on my worn MP3 player at the first CNBloggerCon session. I felt such mixed feelings.

  That year, we primarily talked about blogs, Blogger, RSS, copyrights, Wiki, the public good, technology … there was only one government-related topic, on Taishi village – at the time, because of the Taishi village incident, Wikipedia was blocked. However, at the time, people thought that with regard to the rushing wave of the Internet, [the government] was outmatched. That year, people faced the future full of hope and dreams — this was especially so at night during the open discussion, where scintillating thoughts of every kind came forth.

  Five years passed, and the government became the main topic at the CNBlogger Con. And that word came up again: blocked.

  Five years came, and the space for China’s Internet industry to exist has already been squeezed to the point that it is too painful to look upon. There have been no significant innovations, and at the same time, several excellent innovative applications overseas were one by one put behind the Great Firewall. Even the domestic copycats were either castrated [self-censorship] or killed, not even one was spared.

  People on Twitter have said that the presence of the Great Firewall has pushed back China’s Internet industry at least 5 years, and further, with the high speed development of the Internet industry, 5 years was the equivalent of 50 years. Aether had an additional comment that the closure of websites like Fanfou was the primary reason for [the Internet industry] falling back. I agree with this point of view, but also see it as [due to] the GFW more broadly — all of the censorship on the Internet.

  Last weekend, I participated in a Web technology salon, where we could not avoid touching upon the subject [censorship]. Though we took pains to avoid the topic, people on and off the rostrum all had it on their minds. The environment of China’s Internet industry is so vicious because of China’s status as the world’s biggest authoritarian country.

  At the salon, I saw many friends. Everyone had come together for technology, and I have known some of them for many years. I found it very sad. For someone like me, who had dealt with technology for 10, 20 years, and to have never produced any results. Yet, I spend a considerable amount of time and energy to talk about politics. What kind of bitterness is this?

  Still f***ing blocked.

  I only hope that what this generation does in respect to the government will establish a better environment for the future’s youth, so that all of our work will not have been in vain.

  Even the download for Python is behind the Wall. What the f*** is this.

  » Read more
  • November 30, 2009 11:12 PM

• Obama Walks China’s ‘Great Firewall’ (Updated)

  

  From the New York Times:

  He didn’t explicitly call on China’s leaders to lift the veil of state control that restricts Internet access and online social networking here. But President Obama did tiptoe — ever so lightly — into that controversial topic on Monday when he told students in Shanghai that a free and unfettered Internet is a source of strength, not weakness.

  …… “I will no forget this morning,” one Chinese Twitterer said. “I heard, on my shaky Internet connection, a question about our own freedom which only a foreign leader can discuss.”

  Also from the Guardian:

  Asked about China’s “Great Firewall” Obama described himself as “a big supporter of non-censorship” and said criticism enabled by freedom of expression in the US made him a better president.

  But Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, criticised Obama for framing liberties as a question of political culture rather than international legal norms.

  He added: “What’s important is to put a degree of pressure on the Chinese government for its repressive practices.

  “You cannot do that without a degree of straight talk. That’s not what happened at this meeting … What was needed was to include things relevant to what is happening in the country – as he did in Cairo, for example.”

  From the Washington Post: Obama backs non-censorship; Beijing, apparently, does not.

  Obama was asked what he thought about the Chinese government blocking several Internet international sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as critical news sites. “I’ve always been a strong supporter of open Internet use,” Obama said.

  The question, and Obama’s answer, appeared almost immediately as a top news story on the official New China News Agency, known here as Xinhua, as well on as several popular Chinese Web sites.

  But about an hour later, the stories about Obama embracing Internet freedom disappeared.

  The sina.com site, for example, initially ran the story under the headline: “Obama: The Internet is a tool for becoming stronger and citizens can participate.” An hour later, anyone going to that link got the message, “Cannot find the page.”

  The news was also deleted from Xinhua, which initially posted a story about Obama’s answer on Internet censorship but later carried a notice that said, “Sorry! The news you are checking has been deleted or expired.”

  Even the students who posed questions to Obama were pre-selected, and most appeared to be members of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League.

  And another report on the New York Times blog: Obama Walks China’s ‘Great Firewall’:

  As Reuters reported, the forum “was carefully orchestrated by the local government and was not carried live by national broadcasters. It could only be viewed on some Shanghai news channels, select international media and certain Web sites.” Reuters noted that this contrasted with a question-and-answer session with Chinese students during President Bill Clinton’s visit in 1998, which was carried live by the national broadcaster CCTV.

  This news on the web, via google News.

  Update: See a report from CBS, “Breaking the Great Firewall”:
  

  » Read more
  • November 16, 2009 10:19 AM

• Obama Arrives in Shanghai; Talks with Students in Town Hall Meeting (Updated with Video)

  

  President Obama arrived in Shanghai earlier and has planned a town hall meeting with students. The White House has set up a bilingual interface to stream the event and will also stream it on the White House website and via Facebook, and has also provided embed code for live streaming (scroll down to watch it live). The Guangzhou Consulate will also be tweeting the meeting at this handle: @GZPAS and Chinese Twitterers are posting about Obama’s visit with the hashtag #obamacn.

  From the Los Angeles Times:

  Obama arrived here today as part of his weeklong swing through Asia, the heart of which will be nearly three days in China. Later today in Shanghai, China’s commercial capital, Obama is scheduled to take questions from students in a town-hall-style meeting that is expected to be broadcast live in the city and on the White House website.

  The state-run International Herald Leader newspaper teamed up with online discussion forum Tianya Club and collected more than 3,000 questions for the president from netizens over the last month. The submissions touched upon such diverse topics as America’s ability to repay its debt and the president’s love for basketball.

  At the same time, some Chinese bloggers are waging a “Tear Down This Firewall” campaign, hoping that the president will address the issue of freedom of speech on the Internet.

  
  Read Twitterers’ comments about Obama’s visit via CDT.

  Time Magazine reports on the Obama Administration’s efforts to bypass Internet censorship and directly communicate with Chinese netizens:

  After a temporary easing up during the 2008 Olympics, China’s system of online controls has grown noticeably stricter in recent months, and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are now blocked. The decision to block Twitter followed the Iranian use of the social networking site in June, says Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. Websites discussing sensitive topics like Tibet, the Tiananmen crackdown and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement are also routinely blocked, and in the Xinjiang region, which experienced bloody ethnic riots in July, people are barred from public Internet access and international phone service. The Chinese censorship regime tends to allow some dissident information online, as long as it remains marginal. “It’s not about absolute control,” Xiao says. “It’s about effective control.”

  Online outreach by the Obama Administration is designed in part to bypass such censorship, and increase direct communications with the Chinese people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for one, has been particularly aggressive on the issue since taking office. During her first trip to Asia, she participated in a webchat interview on climate change in Beijing, hosted by the China Daily, during which she responded to questions submitted online. According to the state-owned newspaper, the chat drew more than 10.2 million page views, 50,000 comments and 7,000 questions.

  On Huffington Post, Elizabeth Lynch writes about the expectations young Chinese in Shanghai have for Obama’s visit.

  Footage of Obama arriving in Shanghai via AP:

  And Getty Images has over 1000 images of Obama’s trip so far.

  During the town hall meeting (12:45 pm local Shanghai time), it can be seen live below. (CDT has replaced the live feed below with video of the meeting provided by the White House; the full transcript is available here):
  

  Update: Read the first reviews of Obama’s town hall meeting, from the New York Times and AP, and a live blogging stream of the talk via the Wall Street Journal.

  Chinese Twitterers also followed the talk and tweeted their thoughts. Many responded to the questioner who asked about whether Obama had heard of the “firewall” and if he thinks Chinese citizens should be allowed to use Twitter. Selected tweets translated by CDT:

  @yxtt Thank goodness the question that ought to be asked was asked, and it did not get ‘edited out” with Chinese characteristics. Haha [Referring the question about the Great Firewall and Twitter]
  还好该出来的问题出来了，没有被“中国特色”掉，O(∩_∩)O哈哈~

  @philfenghan I will not forget this morning, I heard, on my shaky Internet connection, a question about our own freedom which only a foreign leader can discuss.
  我不会忘记这个中午，断断续续听着一个他国领导人才会讲到的关于我们自己切身自由的问题。 #obama

  @hecaitou Netease is really crazy: [referring to Chinese Internet portal Netease which immediately published the full text, from Xinhua's transcription, of the question about the firewall on their front page.]
  网易当真很疯狂：http://tinyurl.com/ygqr34v

  @Tie163: Netease, please accept my homage to you, even if this report will be deleted afterwards. http://is.gd/4VZDQ
  网易山西临汾网友 网易，请允许我向你鞠下一躬，哪怕这篇报道随后消失。【新闻】奥巴马回答网友提问防火墙和TWITTER

  @Aether: The Netease article about the Great Firewall has already been taken off the front page.
  网易关于防火墙的文章已经从新闻首页拿掉。

  @hecaitou: The Netease page about Obama answering the question of Great Firewall of Twitter survived twenty seven minutes.
  网易关于奥巴马回答防火墙和Twitter的页面，存活了27分钟。

  @wenyunchao All four major Internet news portals reported Obama’s answer to the Great Firewall and Twitter question. Here are screenshots. http://trunc.it/3anu5 http://trunc.it/3b1e6 http://trunc.it/3cn2v http://trunc.it/3ccft
  “奥巴马回答网友提问防火墙和TWITTER”四大门户网站截图：http://trunc.it/3anu5 http://trunc.it/3b1e6 http://trunc.it/3cn2v http://trunc.it/3ccft

  @fulue A Town Hall Meeting between the President of the United States of America and the fifty cent party of People’s Republic of China
  一次美利坚合众国总统与中华人民共和国五毛的Town Hall Meeting。

  @mozhixu: Chinese university students are all in the “future” class. Some are future overseas students in America; some are future house slaves; today those at the town hall meeting are future officials.
  中国大学都是预科班, 有的是留美预科, 有的是房奴预科,在现场的这些是公务员预科的……

  @secretaryzhang: The first female student Chen Xi who asked a question to Obama is the Deputy Director of Research Office of Communist Youth League of Fudan University. The second male “student” who asked a question to Obama: Huang Lihe, the Communist Youth League Secretary of Foreign Language School of Tongji University.
  第一个向奥巴马提问的女生程熙是共青团复旦大学委员会研究室常务副主任. 第二位实名向奥巴马提问的男“学生”身份：黄立鹤，同济大学外国语学院团委书记.

  » Read more
  • November 15, 2009 5:38 PM

• Tweets of the Week – “Change the Proxy! Yes We Can!”

  

  The upcoming visit of President Obama is a hot topic among Chinese Twitterers. Below are some selected examples, translated by CDT:
  
  @kirk1031 The latest instructions from the Ministry of Truth: All websites need to strictly control their content during the period of Obama’s visit. The following contents must be deleted immediately: 1, Public letters to Obama 2, meeting with dissidents, 3, off-line protests, 4, attacking Chinese government in vague and disguised language.

  @jasontsui From an insider at Shanghai Jiaotong University: Six students from the university were picked to participate in the dialogue with Obama. Students who will be participating in the dialogue with Obama have been selected from different universities in Shanghai, two to five from each school. Currently all these students have been partially restricted in their personal freedom, living and participating in activities together.

  @try2feel America Online Chinese, Voice of America Chinese, Sina North America are all unblocked. CCTV just broadcast a several minute long free ad for the movie 《2012》. Mr. Obama is coming. #Obamacn

  @wodejia Obama. Please stay in China! You are the one who can beat GFW!

  @zhengyun: President Obama arriving China with the his spectacular army of Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot, Google Picasa, Youtube, Yahoo! meme ……

  @Stonehoo: All the web pages I found by using “Obama, China visits, live broadcast” as search keywords cannot be openned/ FUCK CPC!!! FUCK GFW!!! FUCK Fang Binxing (方滨兴)！！FUCK River Crabs！！！

  @blogtd: #Obama President Obama, if you cannot update your Twitter and Facebook while you are in China, I will be happy to provide humanitarian aid.
  .
  @lianyue President Obama, as a winnner of the Nobel Peace Price, do you think the Great Firewall – constructed by the Chinese government – is anti-peace?

  @newsinchina President Obama. Please visit Xinjiang. Xinjiang netizens are expecting you.

  @wenyunchao: Obama, Chinese netizens are calling you to tweet (push) the Wall (GFW) together. [In Chinese, "tweet" and "push" are homynyms.] #obamacn #fotw

  @Starknight: Obama in Beijing ：Change！Change！Change the Proxy！Yes，Yes, Yes, We Can！ #Obamacn

  In other news:
  
  @chuwangtai: Reported by the Southern Weekly: “Starting from next year, all politics department and law schools will add a new course called Socialist Concept of Rule of Law. Contents include: ruling the country according the law, implementing the law for the people, justice and fairness, serving the big picture and following the leadership of the Party. The course is jointly implemented by the Central Committee Organizational Department, Central Committee Propaganda Department, Central Committee Politics and Law Committee and Ministry of Education. ”

  @ranyunfei   Bian Jianguo (边建国), a judge of the High People’s Court of Chongqing said the following to a plaintiff: Let me tell you an ugly truth, no matter how bitter your curses are, the national flag in front of our gate still rises high.

  @Thisis404 Li Yuanchao (李源潮), the Minister of the Central Committee Organizational Department pointed out during the fifth and sixth training class of directors of organizational departments nationwide at the Central Party School and National Administration College: One must pay attention to and care about honest people, fair people, those who do not kiss-ass to the leaders, in order to prevent cronyism. http://is.gd/4VfhA

  » Read more
  • November 14, 2009 11:08 PM

• Chinese Netizens Leap Great Firewall of China to Mark Berlin Wall’s 20th

  

  As CDT reported two weeks ago, Chinese netizens have taken over a website dedicated to commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall in order to blast Internet censorship in their country. Today, on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall, Vancouver Sun and other English media are covering the story:

  Chinese netizens are marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a little anarchy of their own.

  They are flying over the Great Firewall of China (GFW) in exuberant numbers to send messages to an anniversary website in Berlin that was set up to allow people to share memories of the night the wall came down, or, recommend “which walls still have to come down to make our world a better place.”

  The opportunity to use the forum to chip away at Beijing’s heavy Internet censorship was obviously too good a chance for many Chinese netizens to ignore and they deluged the site with calls for web freedom. Until the Chinese government caught wind, that is.

  On the evening of Nov. 2, 13 days after its launch, the Berlin Twitter Wall became inaccessible in China. At that point, according to organizers, 1,500 of the 3,300 tweets posted had been written in Chinese.

  See also from MSNBC’s blog, “In China, battles over a new wall.”

  » Read more
  • November 9, 2009 9:41 PM

• “Mr. Hu Jintao, Tear Down the Great Firewall!” (Updated with Video)

  

  
  To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, KulturProjekte Berlin set up a virtual “Berlin Twitter Wall” where individuals could post their thoughts on the occasion through use of a Twitter hashtag #FOTW. The site’s introduction further invites participants to “let us know which walls still have to come down to make our world a better place!” Chinese netizens have made their voices heard on this last point, and Chinese comments bashing the Great Firewall and Internet censorship now dominate the site. Selections of these comments are translated by CDT below:

  » Read more
  • October 25, 2009 11:20 PM

• “China No Longer Has Internet. It Has LAN”

  

  Lost Laowai sums up the most recent spate of blocked sites for Internet users in China:

  So, to add to lengthy list of blocked websites from earlier this summer (see the footnote, at the end of this post) we must now add a few more:

  Vimeo
  Friendfeed
  Bit.ly (URL shortening service)
  Post.ly (URL shortening service)
  Blip.tv
  Yahoo Meme
  Google Documents
  Fileden.com
  iTweet.net (a twitter web app)
  Twitzap (a twitter web app)
  TwitterGadget (a tiny twitter app on iGoogle)

  The situation really is getting ridiculous. A few other ways to access twitter still exist, thankfully. Just this afternoon one China-based expat on twitter commented that “China no longer has internet. It has LAN” (h/t @illuminantceo), which is an apt description of how insular and freaky it’s getting.

  Tor, the anti-censorship, Internet privacy tool, has also been blocked, Technology Review reports:

  For the first time, the Chinese government has attacked one of the best, most secure tools for surfing the Internet anonymously. The clampdown against the tool, called Tor, came in the days leading up to the 60th anniversary of China’s “national day” on October 1. It is part of a growing trend in which repressive nations orchestrate massive clampdowns during politically sensitive periods, in addition to trying to maintain Internet firewalls year-round.

  “It was the first time the Chinese government has ever even included Tor in any sort of censorship circumvention effort,” says Andrew Lewman, the executive director of Tor Project, the nonprofit that maintains the Tor software and network. “They were so worried about October 1, they went to anything that could possibly circumvent their firewall and blocked it.”

  See a video produced by Technology Review which interviews the project leader of Tor about the uses of the service.

  » Read more
  • October 15, 2009 11:47 AM

• Tu Zifang (涂子方): “The Wall” and “Climbing Over the Wall” (Updated with Images)

  

  This commentary by Tu Zifang was published by Southern Metropolis News on October 11th, translated by CDT:

  Just by typing two Chinese characters “Fan Qiang” (翻墙）［meaning “Climbing over the Wall”] into search engine Baidu or Google, one can find infinite items. Opening those search results, one can see posters including amateur politicians, professional technologists, or people like myself who are computer illiterate but full of curiosity. As far as the content of those items is concerned, it includes complaining, cursing, asking for help, making suggestions, voluntarily providing software download information… All in all it is quite hot. “The Wall” and “Climbing over the Wall” have become quite a scene on the contemporary Chinese Internet.

  “The Wall” is one kind of software. “Climbing over the Wall” is another kind of software. The relations between the two are Mao and Dun ["mao" means sword and "dun" shield; together, "maodun" means conflict]. The purpose of the Wall software is to stop netizens from crossing, and the purpose of the “Climbing the Wall” software is to providing netizens with ladders. The longer the ladders are, the higher the Wall becomes. The higher the Walls, the longer the ladders become. It seems like there is no end to this game. The Wall will only get higher and higher, and the ladders are only getting longer and longer.

  For so many years, the busiest people on the Chinese internet are those who make the Wall software and the “Climbing the Wall” software. It has been said that those people all have something in common: 1. They are all Chinese, 2. They all made a fortune, 3. They all have studied in the US. The only difference is that those who write the Wall software have come back from the US and those who write the Climbing the Wall software are still in the US. This is we Chinese: We will help whoever pays the salary. As long as it makes money, we can do anything. It only hurts ordinary people: So much money spent on “the Wall” and “Climbing the Wall”!

  在谷歌或者百度中输入“翻墙”这两个汉字，可以看见不计其数的条目，打开这些条目一看，可知发帖的人中，有业余政治家，有专业技术高手，也有类似 66我老人家这样爱看稀奇的电脑菜鸟；至于发帖的内容，有抱怨的，有骂娘的，有求助的，有出主意的，有义务提供软件下载地址的……，总之是十分的热闹， “墙”和“翻墙”成为中国当代网络上的一道风景线。

  “墙”是一类软件，“翻墙”是另一类软件，二者是“盾”和“矛”的关系，“墙” 软件是要让你网民过不去，“翻墙”软件则是给你网民送梯子。梯子长了，墙就修得更高，墙更高了，梯子就建得更长。双方的较量看来将永无止境：墙没有最高，只有更高；梯没有最长，只有更长。

  这许多年来，中国的网络上最忙碌的就是那些制作“墙”软件和“翻墙”软件的人，据说这些人的共同之处是：一，都是咱中国人；二，都发了大财；三，都在美国学习过，唯一的不同之处是写“墙”软件的人从美国回来了；写“翻墙”软件的人还留在美国。咱中国人就这德性：谁出钱帮谁；只要能赚钱，什么活也能干。心疼的是咱老百姓，这修“墙”和“翻墙”，该花了多少民脂民膏啊！

  □ 涂子方(网 址 ：http：//blog.ifeng.com/article/3216077.html)

  Here are some images about the Great Firewall created or circulated by netizens:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  And another music video of “Grass-Mud Horse” is here.

  » Read more
  • October 11, 2009 10:10 PM

• Alex Pasternack: The Great Wall Parade

  

  Alex Pasternack writes for China Beat about watching the National Day parade while being sequestered in a foreigners’ compound in Beijing:

  My house arrest in the compound would be temporary and voluntary, and merely a side effect of Beijing’s careful preparations for a parade, which allowed for no unauthorized bystanders along its route. But there was something more threatening about these particular rules. A collection of dismal concrete high-rises surrounded by big walls and guards, the compound always had the feeling of a refuge and a kind of prison. To hammer the point home, the parade, I had heard, would be first and foremost a show of China’s military might.

  Most of these walls aren’t that hard to climb over. The Manchus invaded. These days, a piece of software, a virtual private network, can let your eyes wander outside China’s nanny internet, to such risque enclaves as Twitter or Youtube.

  But there are bigger walls, harder to surmount. The house arrest, the real kind, is a favorite pastime of the Beijing police. They’re always likely to send grim looking men to camp out outside your apartment building if you’re an outspoken AIDS activist or a human rights lawyer, especially when US congressmen are in town, or a sensitive anniversary is approaching.

  » Read more
  • October 8, 2009 2:55 PM

• Haiyan Lee: Brought to You by the People’s Republic of The Onion

  

  Haiyan Lee, a professor of Chinese literature and civilization at Stanford University wrote the following essay. Originally published on The China Beat (currently GFWed), and republished on the Shanghaiist blog:

  For better or for worse, China has been on Americans’ mind for quite some time—at least those Americans who have been paying attention to the intricate linkage between the Chinese compulsion to save and the subprime mortgage crisis that has brought the American economy to its knees, to the chattering class ratcheting up the specter of “China rising,” to the media coverage of the Beijing Olympics and the ethnic riots, to news stories about poisonous toothpaste, carcinogenic toys, and tainted milk powder.

  In the new millennium, China’s has mostly shed its Cold War cartoonish image as an evil Communist regime that hates freedom and democracy but cannot stop its citizens from loving those beautiful ideals, at least not in their basements (they must have basements where they can write subversive poetry, build little replicas of the Statue of Liberty, and dream of rising up against the gerontocrats ensconced behind the Gate of Heavenly Peace). Today, the Chinese are viewed with suspicion not as ideological fanatics (that role has been taken over by Islamic fundamentalists) but as relentless profit-seekers bound by neither law nor conscience. Thus a Chinese company coming out of nowhere to take a stab at acquiring a piece of what was once the pinnacle of American industrial achievements was truly a remarkable event whose significance could not be adequately marked by mainstream media trying to steer clear of fear-mongering. Thus it has fallen on a cabal of professional satirists to spell out its full implications.

  It is commonly said that humor does not translate easily because it is deeply entrenched in the nitty-gritty of a given cultural and social milieu. It requires sustained immersion in local knowledge for the cues to be picked up and savored and for the punch line to hit home. The Onion has owed its success to mostly in-jokes designed for the well-trained ears and eyes of a stratum of Americans very much tuned in to the shifting landscapes of American culture and politics and yet disgusted with the many absurdities unfailingly trotted out by politicians as well as an assortment of celebrities. That we now have a China-themed issue of The Onion is an unmistakable indication of how much China has become part of American life and perhaps the American psyche as well.

  » Read more
  • July 29, 2009 11:07 AM

• Rebecca MacKinnon: China’s Censorship Blowback

  

  Here is Rebecca MacKinnon’s post on her RConversation blog:

   

  So far this week we’ve seen the temporary blocking of Google.com and related services hosted outside of China including GMail. As if that wasn’t bad enough for one week, we’re now told that sexual health websites are a no-go for ordinary Internet users.

  Meanwhile, the increased discussion of censorship all over the Chinese Internet is prompting China’s netizens to educate themselves about the various technical methods to “jump over” the “great firewall.” There are no hard and fast statistics on how many people in China are now using proxy servers, Tor, Psiphon, Freegate/Dynaweb, or OpenDNS as compared to a month ago. But based on the frequent mentions of these tools I’ve been seeing every day on blogs, in Twitter, and on other social networking sites, it seems that the latest Net Nanny follies have helped raise awareness of circumvention tools to a whole new level. If you plug the term 翻墙 (which means “scale the wall” – the most common Chinese euphemism for censorship circumvention) into Google’s search insights and restrict it to searches coming from China, you see a big spike in early June and a bigger spkie in the past few days (click to enlarge):

  

  Searches for Tor (a nonprofit tool for anonymizing and circumvention) are also substantially up this month, and Chinese-language searches originating in China for Freegate (a tool developed and operated by a FLG-affiliated organization) spiked dramatically over the weekend.

  » Read more
  • June 25, 2009 2:49 PM

• Google Site Access in China Briefly Disrupted

  

  (Update: this post was previously entitled: Censorship 2.0: China Blocks Google Search, Apps, Gmail, And More.)

  From TechCrunch:

  The People’s Republic of China has apparently barred its citizens from visiting a host of Google properties, including the main search engine, Google Apps, Google Reader and Gmail. A search on Twitter (preferred hashtag seems to have become #fuckgfw) reveals that many Chinese are complaining, particularly about not being able to use the search engine, although it appears Google.cn can still be reached at this point.

  The block of the services appears to have become apparent to users around 10 AM Eastern Time.

  And from the Telegraph:

  It seems that access to Google.com and Gmail, Google’s web-based email service, could not be accessed through proxy servers, indicating that the websites had been centrally blocked.

  In Beijing, there are reports of patchy access, but access appears to have been largely reinstated, though other areas of China remain in a Google blackout.

  The move is part of an ongoing campaign by the Chinese government, which last week started to block access to Google after accusing the search engine of displaying links to “pornographic” websites among its search results, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

  Also from Reuters:

  Internet users in China were unable to open the main site of Google, the world’s biggest search engine, late on Wednesday evening, and the company’s China chief asked users for patience while it investigated.

  Users in Shanghai and Beijing said they got an error message when they tried to reach the U.S. company’s (GOOG.O) main search page (www.google.com), its Chinese search page (www.google.com.cn) and mail service (www.gmail.com) between around 10pm (1400 GMT) and 11pm local time.

  It was not clear how widespread the blockage was, but the company’s China chief Kai-Fu Lee put a posting on his twitter page after news of outages began to spread within China asking China users for patience while the company investigated.

  “We have received your feedback, we are just investigating, please be patient and wait for feedback from Google overseas, thanks for your support,” he wrote.

  A company spokeswoman at Google in the U.S. said the firm was checking reports of problems with access in China. Most users appeared to get access again by 11 p.m.

  Reaction from Chinese netizens? Here is a typical one:

  

  

  » Read more
  • June 24, 2009 11:48 AM

• Microsoft: China Web Filtering Raises Issues

  

  After a government order announced that all new computers in China would be required to have pre-installed filtering software, Microsoft is denouncing the notice. From AFP:

  Microsoft late Monday said a Chinese rule that personal computers sold in the country include Web filtering software raises issues of freedom of expression, privacy, and security which “need to be properly addressed.”

  In a statement to AFP, a Microsoft spokesperson said “Microsoft believes that the availability of appropriate parental control tools is an important societal consideration for industry and governments around the world.

  “At the same time, Microsoft is committed to helping advance the free flow of information and to encouraging transparency, deliberation and restraint with respect to Internet governance,” the US software giant said.

  Earlier Monday, Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), described the Chinese move as a “very unfortunate development.”

  See also Bruce Einhorn’s piece from BusinessWeek and an article from the New York Times. See also Rebecca MacKinnon’s English summary of the original government order requiring filtering software.

  » Read more
  • June 9, 2009 2:02 AM

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