Behind the Great Firewall

Another article about the ways in which Chinese netizens use the Internet to express themselves, despite the government controls. The Guardian report includes a short video which features an interview with CDT’s Xiao Qiang:

With 200,000 new netizens every day, China’s online population is on the brink of overtaking the United States as the biggest in the world…

In an Olympic year, and at a time of surging economic growth, the new figures are taken by some as proof of Beijing’s irresistible rise. Not everyone likes it. Free speech activists fear it will increase the influence of China’s censors in the virtual world. Foreign governments have raised concerns that the country has become a breeding ground for pirates, hackers and cyber spies.

It was not supposed to be like this. After the internet was connected to China in 1987, civil rights campaigners hoped it would be a catalyst for political reform. But 21 years on, the Communist party is still in power and its model of a tightly controlled internet is gaining ground, if only by force of numbers.

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