{"id":192970,"date":"2016-04-07T14:40:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T21:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=192970"},"modified":"2016-04-07T21:16:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T04:16:03","slug":"u-s-government-netizens-voice-concern-great-firewall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2016\/04\/u-s-government-netizens-voice-concern-great-firewall\/","title":{"rendered":"Mounting Criticism on Both Sides of the Great Firewall"},"content":{"rendered":"
China’s Great Firewall has come under renewed pressure from both ordinary Chinese web users and trade officials in the U.S. Last month, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology posted a draft revision to internet domain rules whose\u00a0ambiguous language raised fear of blocked access to all foreign registered domains<\/a>. The MIIT quickly sought to assuage this concern, voiced widely by foreign media,\u00a0claiming that it was a “misunderstanding.”<\/a> The draft regulations remain online for public comment, and many usually apolitical Chinese are using the opportunity to voice their mounting frustration<\/strong> <\/a>with China’s ever-fortifying\u00a0Great Firewall<\/a>. At The Wall Street Journal, Li Yuan reports:<\/p>\n A Shanghai-based marketing executive at an international trading company who does part-time translation work, Ms. Wang says the government\u2019s existing practice of blocking many foreign websites already makes her work tougher.\u00a0When she was translating an English book about Morocco last year, she couldn\u2019t access Wikipedia and other foreign sites to check information in the book. A series of virtual private networks she had used\u2014software that can circumvent the firewall\u2014had been blocked. Facing a deadline, she asked a friend in Germany to look up the information she needed and email it to her.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a hipster who didn\u2019t pay attention to politics or social issues,\u201d says Ms. Wang, 33 years old. \u201cThe restrictions of the Great Firewall changed me.\u201d<\/p>\n In a country where citizens have few chances to communicate directly with the government, users like Ms. Wang see the comment session as a rare opportunity to be heard\u2014even if it\u2019s ultimately futile. […]<\/p>\n [The increasing isolation from the World Wide Web] has made aspects of life and work unnecessarily hard for more people beyond the pool of political dissidents and advocates who have long opposed government censorship.\u00a0One Internet startup founder in Shenzhen says tech companies like his have to build their own network infrastructure to access foreign sites out of business necessity, including popular coding sites Stack Overflow and GitHub that are hard or impossible to reach in China because of the Great Firewall.<\/p>\n […] Hal Hao, a 40-year-old executive at a big insurance company in Beijing, is among those who are increasingly fed up.\u00a0He was reminded of the limitations again this week, after the so-called \u201cPanama Papers\u201d were leaked and he couldn\u2019t read coverage about offshore assets\u00a0allegedly\u00a0controlled by relatives of China\u2019s top Communist Party officials. The topic has been heavily censored on the Chinese Internet [see CDT’s ongoing coverage of censors’ reaction to the leak<\/a>].\u00a0\u00a0[…] [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ms. Wang’s account of censorship heightening her political awareness recalls a 2012 comment from China Media Project’s David Bandurski on why censors attempt to minimize the visibility of their activity<\/a>: “Media control is a dirty business, and its mechanics are best kept hidden. […]\u00a0Thanks to Weibo, China\u2019s active censorship of ideas is something millions of Chinese experience daily and directly. […W]hile social media controls may be a matter of necessity for China\u2019s jittery leaders, the very act could have a long-term corrosive effect on the Party\u2019s credibility.”<\/p>\n Existing in some form since 1993<\/a>, the Great Firewall\u2014a nickname given to Beijing’s system of blocking foreign online content from view in China\u2014has seen regular updates as internet users have found ways<\/a> to scale it<\/a>, and some have suggested that Chinese authorities are on their way to “perfecting”<\/a>\u00a0the system. Since Xi Jinping rose to the top of state and Party power in 2012, he has overseen the steady tightening of control<\/a> over online and traditional media<\/a>, and his administration has defended China’s practice<\/a> of “internet management<\/a>” from international criticism. Last year, China hit the bottom of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net ranking<\/a>; in years past it had been slightly further up the list.<\/p>\n Recently, Fang Binxing, also known as the “Father of the Great Firewall” for his role in building its initial infrastructure, was forced to publicly tunnel through the Firewall with a VPN<\/a> while giving a speech. Fang has been a regular target of criticism <\/a>from Chinese web users disgruntled with their lack of internet freedom<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, The New York Times’ Paul Mozur reports that U.S. trade officials have joined the chorus of criticism, adding China’s Great Firewall to a list of trade barriers<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n United States trade officials have for the first time added China\u2019s system of Internet filters and blocks \u2014 broadly known as the Great Firewall \u2014 to an annual list of trade impediments. The entry says that over the last decade, the limits have \u201cposed a significant burden to foreign suppliers, hurting both Internet sites themselves and users who often depend on them for business.\u201d<\/p>\n The move, which isn\u2019t likely to have immediate repercussions, speaks to the American government\u2019s growing concern about Chinese Internet regulations and could foreshadow more aggressive actions. It also underscores the opposing visions the world\u2019s two largest economies have about how the Internet should work and be managed.<\/p>\n The United States argues against overt censorship and policies that block the flow of data across borders. China has been pushing its agenda that each state should have the right to closely control what websites are available within its borders.<\/p>\n The report from the Office of the United States Trade Representative said that over the last year, the \u201coutright blocking of websites appears to have worsened,\u201d noting that eight of the top 25 most popular global sites are blocked in China. […] [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China’s Great Firewall has come under renewed pressure from both ordinary Chinese web users and trade officials in the U.S. Last month, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology posted a draft revision to internet domain rules whose\u00a0ambiguous language raised fear of blocked access to all foreign registered domains. The MIIT quickly sought to assuage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":985,"featured_media":174926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,7,14744,14745,14746,100,5,1051],"tags":[53,6354,6300,6304,15866,5812,6379],"class_list":["post-192970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-information-revolution","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","category-top-article","tag-censorship","tag-great-firewall","tag-internet-censorship","tag-internet-control","tag-internet-management","tag-us-trade","tag-united-states","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n\n