Facebook said last week it was contemplating re-entering China, the world’s second biggest economy, after being blocked nearly three years ago.

But its offering would likely face intense competition, political meddling and little commercial success.

Few foreign internet companies have succeeded in China. EBay Inc, Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Yahoo Inc and most recently Groupon Inc form the list of notable online players who have failed to gain traction in the fast-growing nation of 1.3 billion people.

“It’s actually a bit late for Facebook,” said Hong Kong-based CLSA analyst Elinor Leung, who added that the market was already quite saturated with local players such as Sina Corp, Renren Inc, Kaixinwang001 and Tencent Holdings.

Read more about Facebook in China, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, foreign IT companies, Great Firewall
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China’s censorship system is complex and multilayered. The outer layer is generally known as the “great firewall” of China, through which hundreds of thousands of websites are blocked from view on the Chinese Internet. What this system means in practice is that when one goes online from an ordinary commercial Internet connection inside China and tries to visit a website such as hrw.org, the website belonging to Human Rights Watch, the web browser shows an error message saying, “This page cannot be found.” This blocking is easily accomplished because the global Internet connects to the Chinese Internet through only eight “gateways,” which are easily “filtered.” At each gateway, as well as among all the different Internet service providers within China, Internet routers — the devices that move the data back and forth between different computer networks — are all configured to block long lists of website addresses and politically sensitive keywords.

These blocks can be circumvented by people who know how to use anti-censorship software tools. It is impossible to conduct accurate usage surveys, but it is believed likely that hundreds of thousands of Chinese Internet users deploy these tools to access Twitter and Facebook every day. Yet researchers estimate that out of China’s 500 million Internet users, only about 1% or so (a number somewhere in the single-digit millions — still a large number of people but not enough percentage-wise to shape majority public opinion) use these tools to get around censorship, either because most do not know how or because they lack sufficient interest in, or awareness of, what exists on the other side of the “great firewall.”

Fortunately for the government, there are plenty of social networking platforms and other delightfully entertaining and useful services on the Chinese Internet to keep people occupied, without much need to access sites and services based overseas — assuming they have no interest in politics, religion or human rights issues. Baidu, the homegrown search engine, enables people to locate all the content on the Chinese-language Internet that their government permits. The social networking platforms RenRen and Kaixinwang substitute for Facebook. People can blog on platforms run by Chinese companies like Sohu and Sina, which also runs a wildly popular Twitter-like microblogging service, Weibo. QQ, run by the company Tencent, offers instant messaging, gaming and all kinds of interactive services that work seamlessly across both PCs and mobile phones.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Great Firewall, Internet censorship, IT industry, online culture
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China, infamous for its methods of controlling online activity and guiding online opinion, has served as ammunition in the battle against SOPA/PIPA. Commentators the world over are pointing to it as an example of the future that SOPA and PIPA might usher in. In a Global Voices post, Weiping Li translates some comments from Mainland China and Taiwan:

“Now they’re copying us to build up a wall. It’s like after climbing over the wall, we then bump into another one. It’s crazy!! (現在等於他們自己也照著我們這樣造個牆，於是我們以後翻牆出去，又被他們的牆牆住[，]這簡直瘋了嗎！)”

On China’s Sina Weibo microblogging service a Chinese Internet user with nickname “gap foreseeable (落差可見)” expresses concern over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which expected to [be] brought to a vote in U.S. House of Representatives before the end of the year. The Chinese government has long been criticized by Americans for obstructing the free flow of information through a filtering system popularly known as the Great Firewall. Now it is Chinese neitzens’ turn to sneer at proposals for a Made-in-America Great Firewall.

An article at Wired.com, one of the websites involved in the blackout campaign, also likens these bills to the situation in China:

We’ve blacked out the headlines on our website homepage today as part of a global internet protest against two radical anti-piracy bills pending in Congress — legislation that threatens to usher in a chilling internet censorship regime here in the U.S. comparable in some ways to China’s “Great Firewall.”

The Dyn.com page explaining why they oppose SOPA also uses the Great Firewall as a warning:

Are you familiar with the Great Firewall Of China? Sometimes referred to as the Golden Shield project, it’s a Chinese government censorship and Internet surveillance project kicked off in 1998 and put into action in 2003. Simply put, it enables the government to restrict what content its citizens can read and view via IP blocking and DNS filtering. If they don’t like a site request a user makes, it won’t get viewed.

Many dismiss what’s happening in China and chalk to up to their communist political system. That could never happen in a free speech-driven, rights for all society like we have in the United States, right?

If the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) introduced this week gets enacted into law, things could change negatively for Americans which is why Dyn opposes the bill.

But is the Great Firewall an accurate parallel to draw in the campaign against these bills? In a sobering blogpost for Foreign Policy, Isaac Stone Fish points to today’s blackout campaign itself to illustrate the disconnect in using China to warn of the future:

American websites have the right to protest and protect their content because they exist in a country that respect the rule of law. America couldn’t create a “Great Firewall” comparable to China’s, because it wouldn’t be backed by a Chinese-style system where the Communist Party hovers above the law. Comparing the Chinese and American internet is akin to saying that a kitten that scratches furniture and a lion that eats people are both members of the cat family. True, yes, but it completely misses the point.

Update: Echoing comments made by Foreign Policy Isaac Stone Fish, The Los Angeles Times notes that bloggers in China scoff at comparisons between SOPA/PIPA and the Chinese web censorship regime:

“Only an American company could protest the way Wikipedia or Google has to the government,” said Zhao Jing, a closely followed blogger in Beijing who uses the pen name Michael Anti. “A Chinese company would never get away with that.”

Indeed, China’s Internet sector has no choice but to submit to government pressure -– be it by censoring its own users or implementing whatever happens to be the state initiative of the moment (the latest may require the real-ID registration of 250 million micro-blog accounts despite threats to privacy and the cost burden on Web firms).

Another distinction Chinese activists note is that the proposed legislation in Washington is being debated openly in public and ultimately has to adhere to U.S. law. Chinese censorship, on the other hand, operates in an opaque space where no one really knows what’s banned, what isn’t and who is calling the shots.

Similarly, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos highlights the discussion that has emerged on the Chinese Internet:

After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:

We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.

There was little expectation that Chinese Web sites would ever band together to express their opposition to censorship: “Baidu, would you dare do something like this?” one asked.

The most eloquent response to the controversy, perhaps, was one that nobody saw at all. Commentator Shi Han wrote about trying to post a comment to Tencent, the giant Chinese portal. “I’ve written a short article about SOPA. But when I tried to put it up, Tencent replied with a message: ‘Your content has not passed review.’”

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activism, censorship, Great Firewall, Internet censorship, Pipa, protest, SOPA
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In the cat-and-mouse game between Chinese censors and Internet users, the government seems to be testing a new mousetrap–one that may be designed to detect and block tunnels through its Great Firewall even when the data in those tunnels is aimed at a little-known computer and obscured by encryption.

In recent months, administrators of services with encrypted connections designed to allow users secure remote access say they’ve seen strange activity coming from China: When a user from within the country attempts to reach a server abroad, a string of seemingly random data hits the destination computer before he or she can connect, sometimes followed by that user’s communication being mysteriously dropped.

The anti-censorship and anonymity service Tor, for instance, has found that many of its “bridge nodes”–privately-placed servers around the world designed to connect users to the rest of Tor’s public network of traffic re-routing computers–have become inaccessible to Chinese users within hours or even minutes of being set up, according to Andrew Lewman, the project’s executive director. Users have told him that other censorship circumvention services like Ultrasurf and Freegate have seen similar problems, he says. “Someone will try to connect, then there’s a weird scan, and the bridge stops working,” says Lewman. “We see weird things all the time, but this is a semi-consistent weird thing, and it’s only coming from China.”

Also related, the so-called Father of the Great Firewall, Fang Binxing, recently gave a speech on “the future of Internet security” in which he emphasized the need for Internet sovereignty. Translated by Global Voices:

In his conclusion, he put forward the need for ensuring China’s Internet Sovereignty and there are four principles for enhancing such sovereignty:

1. Independency – Against foreign intervention of the network. The government can negotiate for unilateral or multinational agreement for network access.
2. Equality – Against monopoly of giant ISPs such as Sprint and the so-called global principle in Internet governance.
3. Self-Defense – In order to self-defense, a sovereignty should have the rights to cut off from illegitimate network connection.
4. Governance – Against unauthenticated connection, access and plugin. Fang used Google’s pulling out of China as an example to imply that when a company pulls out, its service in China should be ceased.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-censorship tools, Fang Binxing, Great Firewall, Internet censorship, Tor
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Chinese media, Falun Gong, Great Firewall, information control, Internet censorship, Public Security Bureau, self-immolation, Tiananmen Square
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Update: Another related joke is also circulating among Chinese microbloggers. It goes like this:

Q: What if President Fang microblogged a “help” message on his cellphone from the toilet for his “404 problem”?

A: The Men’s Room would be locked tight within 20 minutes.

Read more about the Great Firewall and Fang Binxing via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, Fang Binxing, Great Firewall, satire
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

@AmericanMike: Hello everyone. My name is Mike. I’m from the U.S. I’ve just arrived in Beijing. I want to contact my family members through Facebook, but I can’t… Is there any way to get on Facebook?

@美国人麦克:大家好，我叫麦克，来自美国，我刚到北京，我想上facebook和家人联系，但是上不去了，有什么办法吗？

This tweet soon generated a large number of comments from Chinese netizens, many of which have been re-posted on various online discussion forums and social media sites.  Following are some examples of the comments translated by CDT:

@wenlongxiong: Across the Great Firewall, we can reach every corner of the world [This is a reference to the first email sent out from China in 1987, which read: "Across the Great Wall, we can reach every corner in the world"]

@shennanyunfu: A: Go home! B: Scale the wall.

@kenneth_wang_wei：Please contact the police should you encounter any problems*. [This sentence was translated as “difficult to find the police” on an information board in a popular tourist attraction of Jiangxi province. A picture of this board was widely re-posted on cyberspace.]

@duoluoxi-tuotuo: Welcome to the Great Chinese LAN.

@ajichihuo: Once you overthrow our government, you’ll be able to access Facebook.

@yan-at-shanghai: Bro, once you are in China, you’d better to use QQ and Renren.com*. And you should let your American family members to learn how to use QQ and Renren.  [*Renren.com is a popular social networking site in Mainland China that is similar to Facebook.]

@youmutianna: According to our relevant laws and regulations, your request is denied.

@anarchy_whale: If you are unable to scale the wall, you’ll have to bring your friends and family to Sina Weibo…

@yimanfu: Two methods: First, join our revolution and help us build a democratic government — this method will solve the problem once and for all, and it’ll ensure your access to Facebook the next time you’re in Beijing; second, use circumvention tools such as Autoproxy or Freegate (thanks to your government for funding these tools, which have been helping us learn a lot of truths) — this method is easy and low-cost, but I can’t guarantee it’ll always work.

@Nanyiqichidechunjie:  Foreign Ministry Spokesperson: You need to obey China’s relevant laws and regulations. You can let your family members sign up for Kaixin001.com*. [Kaixin001.com is another popular social networking site in Mainland China.]

@feishangzhe: Bingo! Lost connection means you are in China.

@zengjianren: Please go to Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and look for President Fang Binxing.

@wolaiwozhengfu: You guys are so unfriendly towards our foreign friend. All you care about is money!//@lalalala: Your excellency, I can offer you a magical software that only costs 49.98 U.S. dollars //@mohuluojia: Your excellency, I can offer you a magical software that only costs 49.99 U.S. dollars. //@pikemeng: Your excellency, I can offer you a magical software that it only costs 50 U.S. dollars.

@Qingtianbairi: If you have an Android phone, please download Puffin Browser. So you can access Facebook without circumvention.

@wonverjiaoliangxiaoxiao: I can loan you my “little dove.” [“Little dove” is a nickname of the popular free circumvention tool named “Freegate.”]

@XeonivX: If you’re unwilling to break the law, you can teach your family members how to use Renren.com*. But it takes some knowledge of Chinese language…

@Yizhangbanzhuanlian: Why the hell wouldn’t you just call them?

@Paiyunchu: It’s how it is here. Facebook has always been blocked in China for the purpose of maintaining stability. We used to be able to access it through circumvention, but since the October 1st National day is approaching, China is blocking the Internet even more desperately. So circumvention is really difficult these days. But you know, there’s Kaixin001.com in China, which is the “stabilized” copycat version of Facebook. So why don’t you invite your family members to Kaixin001? Haha! I’m not sure whether you’d understand what I’ve just said. If not, please ask some Chinese students for explanation.

@gezhidaoni: So why did you even come to China? It’s just a piece of crap here. Internet surfing in China is limited to the Great Chinese LAN–there is no  external network! We can’t receive any information from the outside world! In China you can only be a frog in the well and all you can see is what’s above you! I urge you to go back to the U.S.! China’s ditch oil and 70KPH can both make you disappear without a trace! The point is: The Celestial Empire is dangerous!

@BuzhuangAbuzhuangC: Why do you need Facebook? You should watch CCTV’s News Simulcast and read People’s Daily as well as Global Times so that you can experience the superiority of socialism.

@yanwuyo: Thank you for testing our Great Chinese LAN. Apparently, it’s worth our taxpayers’ money. For someone that’s newly arrived like you, please just go with the flow. It’s such a great effort of our government. And as an American, why are you trying to access an American website in China here? You’re definitely causing trouble here. I’d like to represent the Chinese taxpayers who wish to peacefully live in the Great Chinese LAN and offer you the most tepid protest.

@Lanlingfeiniao: Isn’t he stupid? Why do you need Facebook in the Celestial Empire? Please watch CCTV’s News Simulcast, which enables you to know the entire world simultaneously. Oh yeah, let me check my Alipay* account and see if I’ve gotten paid 50 cents. [*Alipay is a Chinese third-party online payment platform that’s similar to Paypal. ]

@Zhuyili: In the Celestial Empire, Facebook has to die. [*Facebook is often phonetically translated into Chinese as “has-to-die.” (Fei Si Bu Ke, 非死不可)]

@Xiaokunjun: Hurry up and travel backward in time. It’s 1997 here.

@WeilianchumozhuyiIX: Had to quietly bookmark this post…

@V-LiLLian: Scale the wall!  You can jump out of the window and crouch on top of the wall, then you will be able to access Facebook.

@: What “Fei Si Bu Ke*”? There is nothing called “Fei Si Bu Ke”! Which work unit are you from?

@yimuxiaoseng: Bro, go back to the U.S. It’s Mars here.

@Ciscogeek: Make your American family convert to Communism and start using Sina Weibo–problem solved!

@Tailszhihun: I have nothing else to say but asking you: what kind of madness you were in so that you have decided to come to China?

@lingzhaoran: …. my friend, this is a wrong station to get off… you should keep flying to Tokyo.

@FreeDroid: Kiddo, if you didn’t know enough about this place, you shouldn’t have come.

@Zhuanyeqihong: I’d like to suggest you call the U.S. Embassy and urge them to solve this problem. If you succeed, Chinese people will remember you.

@XTxiaotian: This place is also known as “West Korea.”

@Lee-Imagine: Haha, you should let your whole family sign up for Renren.com, so maybe they’ll find their long-lost first love.

@Yuhao: They are so considerate that they’re afraid that the Facebook server cannot handle the traffic because of China’s large population.

@-Chilanqiao-: My dear, you’ve got into the wrong country. This is a sanctuary where this is no Facebook or Twitter!

@sim_Zhou: As a host, I’d suggest you to look for Hongxing*, since she’s the only person who can scale the wall. [*Hongxing (红杏) literally means “red plum blossom” in Chinese and is used as a word game here. “Red plum blossom scaling the wall (红杏出墙)” is a Chinese idiom meaning having an affair.]

© sandra for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, Great Firewall, Internet censorship
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

I asked Chas Freeman what he made of China’s current turmoil. He is a former diplomat who served as Richard Nixon’s interpreter during his visit to China in 1972 …. When it came to contemporary China, Freeman said that he takes seriously the complaints about economic inequality, ethnic tension, and other potential sources of instability. But, he said, they remind him of conversations he had when living in Taiwan in the 1970s, before Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang party had moved from quasi-military rule to open elections. “People would say they are corrupt, they have no vision, they have a ridiculous ideology we have to kowtow to, but that no one believes in practice,” he told me. “And I would say, ‘If they’re so bad, why don’t you get rid of them?’ That would be greeted with absolute incredulity.” Taiwanese of that era would tell him that, corrupt or not, the party was steadily bringing prosperity. Or that there was no point in complaining, since the party would eliminate anyone who challenged its rule. The parallel with mainland China was obvious. A generation later, Taiwan had become democratized.

Conceivably, that is what another generation might mean for the mainland—especially if the next wave of rulers are less hair-trigger about security, and more concerned about the lobotomizing effects on their society of, for instance, making it so hard to use the Internet. Which in turn is part of a climate that keeps their universities from becoming magnets for the world’s talent, which in turn puts a drag on China’s attempts to foster the Apples, Googles, GEs of the future. We don’t know, but we can guess that whatever China’s situation is, a generation from now, we will be able to look back and find signs that it was fated all along. “People predicted the fall of the Chinese Communist Party in 1989, and it didn’t happen,” Perry Link told me. “People did not predict the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and it did happen. I’m sure that whatever happens in China, or doesn’t, we will be able to look back and say why.” If only it were possible to do that now.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chiang Kai-shek, democracy, Great Firewall, James Fallows, jasmine revolution, Kuomintang, perry link, Soviet Union, Taiwan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A Reply Letter to the Domestic Security Department:

Although the weather cooled for a day, hot, muggy weather has returned to Xi’an. After the serious high speed rail accident, I believe every conscientious Internet user will also continue to feel stifled. As a teacher, I have no way of cheering up either. This morning I discovered a few unbelievable messages in my inbox. Of course, some were recovered from my junk mail. After reading the mail, I was shocked and then angered. I eventually cooled off and decided to openly publish this essay. I invite everyone to comment on whether what I’m saying is true.

The first letter
xxxxxxandpeople@163.com, July 29, 2011, 4:57 p.m.

You’re Zhang Xiang from the Xi’an University of Technology, right? Someone has reported that you teach how to get around the firewall during class. Please stop teaching this immediately or else we will report you to the Ministry of Education. We will also report you to your university. Please tell us your mobile phone number. We will give you a call. We hope you understand. Let’s let bygones be bygones.

The second letter

Hello Zhang Xiang. We monitored some information you put online the other day. We hope you can explain your behavior to us and delete your posts on Twitter.
Best

First of all, judging by the hollow, childish wording, I thought it was a student or former classmate playing a practical joke on me. Of course it could also be that someone who had taken a disliking to me was trying to scare me intentionally. On second thought, this kind of email looks a lot like a spammer trying to scam me.

And then, I can’t help but think about those Domestic Security Department officers who are busy to the point of death. Because my students have posted my lectures on Baidu Documents, the authorities have my various email addresses. So in the end, with all the factors considered, I think there’s a 60 percent chance it’s from the Domestic Security Department, a 20 percent chance it’s from a scam artist and a 20 percent chance that it’s a practical joke.

I invite my friends to analyze and probe what’s really going on.

1. I’m a Communist Party member, as well as a civilian instructor. I’ve always gone about my business in a proper manner. There’s a picture of me receiving an award on the official Xi’an University of Technology news website on the news section for undergraduate education. I welcome you to take a look.

When I joined this school, the Xi’an University of Technology was among the top in the nation in granting doctoral, masters and bachelors degrees. Although a lack of funding has seen it fall in the rankings during the past ten to fifteen years, the teaching staff has maintained its moral backbone. Many have observed the fruits of these years of grueling work. While employment promotion has had an effect on our school and while recruitment for our web engineering major is sluggish, yet the web engineering department at the Computer Science Institute at which I work is responsible for both majors in web engineering and the “Internet of things.” Here, the integral power of the Computer Science Institute is concentrated. It is the most tightly bound collective. The students trained here go into positions on par with Qinghua and Peking University students.

People must purport themselves righteously. If the emails are from a scam artist or were sent as a practical joke. I implore you to do the right thing. To live isn’t easy; don’t live perfunctorily. Assuming the email was from a Domestic Security Department officer: you shouldn’t use a personal email address to send me a message, nor should you ask me to use my personal mobile phone to contact you. This is what the scam artists are doing now. If you truly are from the Domestic Security Department then handle the matter openly; credible people don’t operate in secrecy. Use an official email account to send me information. Tell me your real name and give me your office number. Of course, in the short term I welcome you to use personal phones and email addresses to tell me what’s going on here. Of course, the email addresses are very likely not from the actual sender. Forging a sender’s email address is something a scam artist with a middle-school diploma can manage. I’ve hidden the address on the emails to avoid harming the innocent.

If this really was the Domestic Security Department, then all of my accounts are already being monitored. By responding publicly to your email, you will certainly see it.

2. I’d like to commend the [author of the] second letter that was sent to me for knowing how to use Gmail. The wording is polite. I’m grateful for that. I don’t hold an official post. I do not pervert the law. I wholeheartedly engage in instruction to educate people. The tax return I received last year proves I paid 394.40 yuan in taxes. To pay for family expenses, I began this year doing a bit of hourly work for others after completing my teaching duties in full. My student who are graduating this year will earn three times my salary. Those who have worked for five years earn five times my salary; ten years, seven times.

I don’t have an advanced degree, nor am I academically corrupt. I simply want to devote myself to answering academic questions and to provide mutually beneficial instruction. I want to teach the students the most advanced knowledge, making myself worthy to both student and parent. The greatest title bestowed upon me is that of teacher. My desire is to see my students fill the world.

3. Relatively speaking, the second letter understood basic human kindness. It showed me basic respect, so I will respond to it first.

Assuming you really are from the Domestic Security Department, I’ll I can say is you must be tired. As someone from within the system, I understand the tough spot you’re in. In respect to your request for me to erase my Twitter post, please pardon me for being unable to comply. First, as a matter of character, once I’ve made a comment, there is no way of taking it back. I use my real name and so I take responsibility for what I’ve said. Secondly, the constitution and the law stipulates that every person enjoys freedom of speech. The party constitution requires party members to be resolute in making criticism and self-criticism. Please tell me first, which sentence of mine violated the law? And please provide me with the corresponding legal provision.

Finally, as a fair-minded scholar who has researched internet safety and cyber attack detection, as someone who is in the same field of studies as President Fang Binxing at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, I can tell you with full confidence that even I could never expect to be able to delete what’s been said online. The truth will certainly be reposted in every nook and cranny of the internet. It will enter into the hearts of everyone who sees it. There’s a saying that words are like splashed water; they do not disappear into the air but sink deeply into the earth.

The truth will never be extinguished. It will circulate and be endlessly reborn.

4. The second letter says “We monitored some information you put online.” All I can say is you must be tired. Perpetual monitoring is without a doubt tiring and tedious. What’s more is you’re using outdated technology.

For millennia, in China and abroad, common scholars have produced much of our scientific technology. Academia in China is corrupt to an extreme degree today. Do you think President Fang and others at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication – with all the scheming and purloining of our nation’s scientific research funds – have the mental vigor to research advanced technology?

President Fang at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, this bureaucratic, beastly, authoritarian official, has used public authority to block a great amount of technology websites. He has seriously impeded the proliferation of scientific technology. Many working in academia can’t see other countries’ progress in advanced research, but can only operate blindly, making poor quality imitations. The continuation of such trends can seriously delay the nation and its people’s future. Of course those like President Fang are afraid of others knowing that they are using outdated technology and products to swindle the country because it would prevent them from taking research money for themselves.

I say you’re tired because your workload is ever increasing. More and more people know about the internet. More and more people understand that if someone doesn’t say something, then corruption will become more and more severe. And so the keywords on your list continue to grow, as do the number of websites you must monitor. The number of people selected for monitoring is also increasing. With this busy, boring work and outdated technology and equipment, someday you will work yourself to death. Please make your decision sooner rather than later.

5. The first letter takes an illegal matter, a matter that should never see the light of day, and phrases it in such strong, justifiable words. It sounds like it was written by someone in the mafia. It’s not often one sees such an extreme level of shamelessness. Of course, perhaps you were forced into doing it, but even if you are working within the system, you should learn from the author of the second letter. You’re also a person. Only after respecting others will others respect you.

The writer said: “Someone has reported that you teach your students in class how to get around the firewall.” Please don’t pull my students into this. My students range from freshmen to those in their final year of master’s research to doctoral degrees. I have received them equally and have honestly bestowed them with scientific knowledge regardless of their scores or family background. Even though most young teachers [in my school] don’t dare give their students failing grades because they are afraid it will affect their evaluations, my students rank me in the top 10 percent even though the number of students who fail my class is around 15% or higher. Justice calms the heart. I am not afraid. So please do not slanderously portray my students as those who don’t know the difference between right and wrong.

Of course there are members of the 50 cent party and informants among my students. During school closures, every instructor has taken part in exercises in which we consider our students. The teachers are already aware of their identities. If people didn’t know, then they are blind. I can’t believe that because of this matter someone would report me. I have taught each student individually according to their capacities, so of course I understand them.

6. Supporting my belief that it was the Domestic Security Department is the intimidating language used in connection with the phrase “scaling the firewall.”

As someone who has worked within the system, and as an old party member, I have friends and student in the military, Domestic Security Department, police, government and [related] work units. Of course I know what the Domestic Security Department fears the most. But I can tell you that I don’t practice Qi Gong [i.e., I am not a member of Falun Gong] so you can relax.

As a teacher who leads by example, I only give my students tools that lose their effectiveness within a short period of time. I lead them to the door and then emphasize the use of many different kinds of open-sourced software for long-term, uninhibited internet use. Furthermore, I warn them, if they see anything that makes them uncomfortable, they can always watch a week’s worth of network news to recover.

Scaling the firewall

I can confidently say that it is completely necessary to teach this content to computer science majors. Yet many students majoring in computer sciences, web engineering, software engineering, and “the Internet of things” don’t take classes from teachers with such professional training. Plus, there aren’t too many diligent teachers. So it creates [a situation] in which knowledge of how to scale the wall is passed on orally by a small group of students. So this lack of guidance causes students to either wallow around on porn [websites] or to be tricked and cheated.

Everyone can figure it out by looking at the low graduation rate of computing majors at the country’s best schools. Look at the number of automation and auto-control majors who are making software and stealing the rice bowls of the computing majors.

Think for a moment about all the websites in the world. On the mainland, we can’t visit 80 percent of them. At the same time, there are also many technology blogs that are restricted. There’s no way to view a large number of teaching videos. How can we study the latest culture and knowledge? Most teachers are not of a high level, nor are they serious about teaching. Few students have good self-study skills. They spend their days idly, submersed in computer games or causing trouble outside. If you’re from the Domestic Security Department, if you have children, do you think things can continue like this?

7. Let me clarify that today the phrase “scaling the firewall” has already become positive. This behavior is already a simple matter. Generally speaking, nearly half the people who get online know about getting past restrictions on internet use—restrictions such as: legal restrictions imposed by employers; restrictions used by universities in order to save money; Green Dam software used by elementary and middle schools; various restrictions used by internet cafes, and of course the illegal filtering that is enforced using public power. Breaking boundaries in search of freedom is part of everyone’s nature. I trust that, as [as a member] of the Domestic Security Department, you also feel this way. It’s just that you can only sit stifled in silence.

Narrowly speaking, I’m talking about breaking through the illegal “Great Firewall” on which President Fang and his gang at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication have squandered the country’s financial resources and ignored the country’s laws. I already said above, the technology they are using is extremely outdated. It’s nothing more than pulling the wool over uncultured bureaucrats’ eyes. While [those who filter the internet] can scale the wall whenever they want, and have access to advanced technology, there are still quite likely some who have not lost their consciences, and who do not savor their demeaning lackey work.

Many university students can scale the firewall; it’s merely a questions of when. Just look at the shoe that was thrown at President Fang and you’ll know how much the students hate him. They hope to see him brought to justice. While he’s illegally controlling everyone in China, he himself enjoys uninhibited access to the internet. What a case of split personality disorder.

8. Let me make another appraisal of techniques to scale the wall. It’s really such a simple matter. Unless the whole country is cut off and isolated from the internet, there’s no technology that can block the internet. Try to understand this. Regardless of their major, most men who have been to university have no trouble with this. Many women can do it too.

One reason why the internet can’t be blocked is technical. It’s fundamentally impossible. It’s impossible for the same reason that thousands of miles of great wall could not protect the second Qin emperor from being killed. Another reason is that President Fang and his followers aren’t even in the industry. The technology they use to fool people is substandard. Finally, no matter where you go, you will find good people. There are people inside the system that passively let things slip and refuse to cooperate with [government] authority. Although they are forced to aim, their conscience [compels them to miss the target by] lifting the barrel of their gun a few centimeters.

Besides this, in the IT industry, some corporations that help manufacture web monitoring equipment are staffed with people whose backgrounds are in government. Their management is chaotic; their companies’ prospects dim. It’s difficult to retain anyone with real technical talent. Furthermore, those [with real technical talent] will often, in addition to working from within the company, also work outside the company developing new tools for getting around the firewall.

So climbing the wall is simple. Any fuss over the matter is expressed only by the ignorant.

9. Lastly, I’ll discuss what made me think it was a scammer. The first letter stated: “Please stop teaching this immediately or else we will report you to the Ministry of Education. We will also report you to your university. Please tell us your mobile phone number. We will give you a call. We hope you understand. Let’s let bygones be bygones.” These words closely resemble the language used by internet scammers. Community police have gone around posting warnings to prevent people from being tricked [by similar scams]. As soon as one receives threatening mail or text messages, they should report it to community police immediately.

If it really was the Domestic Security Department, do you think the Xi’an University of Technology has worked so hard all these years and no one with a guiding sense of right and wrong is left? Do you really think the education department is just going to take your words and punish an ordinary instructor? If so, then how many teachers would be left in this country? That would set off a stampede. Open your eyes wide and look. Those people whose careers took a hit some twenty years ago, now they are living more comfortably than the people on the inside.

In regard to these threatening words, I can only speak as an old party member for more than a decade; I will not be intimidated; don’t give me any more of this mafia bullsh*t.

Because I’m committed to teaching and educating people, I have endured at least ten years of poverty. I won’t abandon teaching in the future.

I’m going to make a bet as to what extent education will decline, as to how long this society will go on disrespecting knowledge and instruction. Let’s see how long this mob can continue to run amuck and flagrantly disregard the law.

10. As an educator, I invite everyone to critique the education system. I invite everyone to oppose corruption. We’re all sitting in a high-speed rail car; it takes effort from everyone if we don’t want to run off the track. I recommend that everyone watch the famous German movie “The Lives of Others.” I invite everyone to look inside and ask yourselves, what kind of person am I?

The movie, “The Lives of Others” describes what happens after the Berlin wall came down. Just copy this downloading link into Xunlei.com, Flashget, eMule or other downloading tools and you can download it. Sharing ed2k files cannot be blocked—even people like President Fang Binxing at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications cannot block this with their outdated technology—the authorities lacks the ability.

11. The Xi’an University of Technology is a research university. It does its utmost to train the backbone of the country. Not many of our students leave the country and many employers have praised our university. I urge employers to ask Xi’an University of Technology Computer Science Institute web engineering and “internet of things” graduates if they can get around the firewall. I can tell you with certainty, those who can’t were not good students.

For students of computer sciences, a field that severely lacks a clear teaching emphasis, and for software engineering majors, who can only receive instruction on par with vocational schools, you can be a bit softer. Please ask them if they know what getting around the firewall means and reject those who don’t know.

12. Finally, I will discuss my lesson plans. Only after some students posted my lesson plans in Baidu Documents were these two letters, ostensibly from the Domestic Security Department, able to reach the mailbox I use for receiving homework, answering questions and other official uses.

In the future, I ask my students not to post my lesson plans online. They are intentionally made imperfect. Within them, there are a few intentional mistakes that will mislead those who did not attend my class. Although students have always given me a poor mark on my lesson preparation and this has always lowered my overall score, it is worth doing. Although I have no chance of being judged as excellent, my students’ eyes are still keen. I always get above a 90 percent approval rating. For education, it is worth it. My purpose in doing this is:

I don’t want to let myself depend on the lesson plan and fail to teach in a lively manner. You have to suspect that teachers with perfect lesson plans didn’t write them themselves. These years, there are more and more teachers who do it like this. Every year I have to turn down teachers who ask me to complete their lesson plans for them. The fact that a lesson that I made in 2003 is still widely used is great proof of this.

Lots of the things I teach in class won’t appear in my lesson plans. This is to avoid having students who come to class but don’t listen, then study the lesson plan before the test. If you didn’t listen in class, you will certainly fail.

Let it be known among my students, you don’t need to print out the lesson plan. Most of the information is in the book. A bit of it I emphasized in the lecture and you should write it in your notebooks. When you’ve finished taking exams you can throw out any Chinese textbooks. Go to the library and read some foreign textbooks, or a few of you can get together and buy some classic foreign textbooks. Even if it was a textbook I edited, throw it out. I know it is incredibly lacking compared to the foreign books.

A grave reminder: the tools themselves are innocent. Use Google properly. Obey they law. Building a society ruled by law requires everyone’s participation. Uprooting corruption requires everyone to act.

Read more about the Domestic Security Department, via CDT.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic censorship, DSD, Fang Binxing, Great Firewall, Internet censorship
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This source learned of China’s interest when it approached him to see if he could help put together a stake large enough “to matter.” …

There’s little need for such concern. For one, even a billion dollar stake isn’t a very big stake in Facebook, these days. The company is expected to IPO at a $100 billion valuation. For another, China would be buying non-voting stock and would have no say in Facebok’s operations. And finally, it’s not like shareholders in Facebook have some special privilege that allows them to see what users are doing or saying.

Importantly, sovereign wealth funds are pretty distinct from their governments.

Because it’s a private company, Facebook will have to approve any sale of its stock to China. We imagine it will. It’s been reported that Mark Zuckerberg would like Facebook to move into China. One big reason American firms stumble in China is that the government tends to favor locals when it comes to regulation. One way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to allow the governement to own a stake.

Meanwhile, Foreign Policy’s Passport blog examines mistaken reports that the new, invitation-only Google+ service was blocked in China even before it opened to the public.

Shanghaiist isn’t impressed with the research techniques behind the mistaken reports:

Washington Post, and others, are only citing GFW [Great Firewall, the nickname for China's internet censorship firewall] check-up sites like Great Firewall of China and Ping. To give you an idea of how unreliable those tests are, we just tried Google+ again on both, and got an “OKAY” from Ping and a “fail” from Great Firewall.

Sadly, when it comes to censorship, Western news outlets have something of a track record with overzealous reporting. This spring, the lede of a New York Times piece purported to expose Chinese propaganda agents cutting off phone calls at the mention of the word “protest.” Shanghai-based journalist (and FP contributor) Adam Minter tested the Times’ claims and found them overblown, as did Shanghaiist’s Kenneth Tan. Later that day, Times researcher Jonathan Ansfield, who was involved with the piece, left a damning comment on Minter’s post:

for the record, the contributing reporter’s own tests comport with yours. regrettably his input on the story made little difference.

 

See also CDT’s posts on the mistaken Google+ blockage report and the New York Times “protest” phone controversy.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, Google, Great Firewall, Mark Zuckerberg, new york times, washington post
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