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The Great Firewall (''GFW''; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
to regulate the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
domestically. Its role in
internet censorship in China Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) affects both publishing and viewing online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of th ...
is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking
transmission control protocol The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is commonl ...
(TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g.
Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the List of most visited websites, most-visi ...
,
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
,
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, and others) and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations. Besides censorship, the Great Firewall has also influenced the development of China's internal internet economy by giving preference to domestic companies and reducing the effectiveness of products from foreign internet companies. The techniques deployed by the Chinese government to maintain control of the Great Firewall can include modifying search results for terms, such as they did following Ai Weiwei’s arrest, and petitioning global conglomerates to remove content, as happened when they petitioned
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
to remove the ''Quartz'' business news publication’s app from its Chinese App Store after reporting on the
2019–2020 Hong Kong protests The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, also known as the 2019 Hong Kong protests, or the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, were a series of demonstrations from 15 March 2019 in response to the introduction by the Hong Kong government ...
. The Great Firewall was formerly operated by the SIIO, as part of the Golden Shield Project. Since 2013, the firewall is technically operated by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is the entity in charge of translating the
Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...
's doctrine and policy into technical specifications. As mentioned in the "
one country, two systems "One country, two systems" is a constitutional principle of the People's Republic of China (PRC) describing the governance of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The constitutional principle was formulated in the earl ...
" principle, China's
special administrative regions The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...
(SARs) such as
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
and
Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
are not affected by the firewall, as SARs have their own governmental and legal systems and therefore enjoy a higher degree of autonomy. Nevertheless, the U.S. State Department has reported that the central government authorities have closely monitored Internet use in these regions, and Hong Kong's National Security Law has been used to block websites documenting anti-government protests. The term ''Great Firewall of China'' is a combination of the word
firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spre ...
with the
Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic grou ...
. The phrase "Great Firewall of China" was first used in print by Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé in 1997.


History

A favorite saying of
Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. Aft ...
's in the early 1980s, "If you open the window, both fresh air and flies will be blown in", is considered to be the political and ideological basis of the GFW Project..
There are several variants of this saying in Chinese, including "如果你打开窗户换新鲜空气,就得想到苍蝇也会飞进来。" and "打开窗户,新鲜空气进来了,苍蝇也飞进来了。". Their meanings are the same.
The saying is related to a period of the economic reform of China that became known as the " socialist market economy". Superseding the political ideologies of the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
, the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, despite the economic freedom, values and political ideas of the Chinese Communist Party have had to be protected by "swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies. The internet in China arrived in 1994, as the inevitable consequence of and supporting tool for a "socialist market economy". Gradually, while Internet availability has been increasing, the Internet has become a common communication platform and tool for trading information. The Ministry of Public Security took initial steps to control Internet use in 1997, when it issued comprehensive regulations governing its use. The key sections, Articles 4–6, are: In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party feared that the
China Democracy Party The Democracy Party of China (DPC; ) is a political party that started in the People's Republic of China, and was banned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).Gittings, John. ''The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market''. (2005). Oxford Univ ...
(CDP) would breed a powerful new network that the party elites might not be able to control. The CDP was immediately banned, followed by arrests and imprisonment. That same year, the GFW project was started. The first part of the project lasted eight years and was completed in 2006. The second part began in 2006 and ended in 2008. On 6 December 2002, 300 people in charge of the GFW project from 31 provinces and cities throughout China participated in a four-day inaugural "Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System". At the exhibition, many western high-tech products, including Internet security, video monitoring and human
face recognition A facial recognition system is a technology capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, an ...
were purchased. It is estimated that around 30,000–50,000 police were employed in this gigantic project.
Fang Binxing Fang Binxing is a former Principal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He is also known for his substantial contribution to China's Internet censorship infrastructure, and has been dubbed "Father of China's Great Fire Wa ...
is known for his substantial contribution to China's Internet censorship infrastructure, and has been dubbed "Father of China's Great Fire Wall".


Origins of Chinese Internet law

China's view of the Internet is one of "Internet sovereignty": the notion that the Internet inside the country is part of the country's sovereignty and should be governed by the country. While the United States and several other western countries passed laws creating computer crimes beginning in the 1970s, China had no such legislation until 1997. That year, China's sole legislative body – the
National People's Congress The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC; ), or simply the National People's Congress, is constitutionally the supreme state authority and the national legislature of the People's Republic of China. With 2,9 ...
(NPC) – passed CL97, a law that criminalizes "cyber crimes", which it divided into two broad categories: crimes that target computer networks, and crimes carried out over computer networks. Behavior illegal under the latter category includes, among many things, the dissemination of pornographic material, and the usurping of "
state secrets Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, ...
." Some Chinese judges were critical of CL97, calling it ineffective and unenforceable. However, the NPC claimed that it intentionally left the law "flexible" so that it could be open to future interpretation and development. Given the gaps in the law, the central government of China relies heavily on its administrative body, the State Council, to determine what falls under the definitions, and their determinations are not required to go through the NPC legislative process. As a result, the Chinese Communist Party has ended up relying heavily on state regulation to carry out CL97. The latter definition of online activities punishable under CL97, or "crimes carried out over computer networks", is used as justification for the Great Firewall, and can be cited when the government blocks any ISP, gateway connections, or any access to anything on the internet. The definition also includes using the internet to distribute information considered "harmful to national security," and using the internet to distribute information considered "harmful to public order, social stability, and Chinese morality." The central government relies heavily on its State Council regulators to determine what specific online behavior and speech fall under these definitions. The reasons behind the Internet censorship in China include: * Social control: the Internet is a means for freedom of speech, and dissemination of campaigns could lead to protests against the government. * Sensitive content: to control information about the government in China. * Economic protectionism: China prefers the use of local companies that are regulated by Chinese regulations, since they have more power over them, e.g. Baidu over
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
.


Campaigns and crackdowns

As part of the Great Firewall, beginning in 2003, China started the Golden Shield Project, a massive surveillance and censoring system, the hardware for which was provided by mostly U.S. companies, including
Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
. The project was completed in 2006, and is now carried out in buildings with machines manned by civilians and supervised by China's national police force, the
Public Security Bureau A Public Security Bureau (PSB) () of a city or county, or Public Security Department (PSD) () of a province or autonomous region, in the People's Republic of China refers to a government office essentially acting as a police station or a local ...
(PSB). The main operating procedures of the gatekeepers at the Golden Shield Project include monitoring domestic websites, email, and searching for politically sensitive language and calls to protest. When damaging content is found, local PSB officials can be dispatched to investigate or make arrests. However, by late 2007, the Golden Shield Project proved to operate sporadically at best, as users had long adapted to internet blocking by using proxy servers, among other strategies, to make communications and circumnavigate to blocked content. Internet cafés, an extremely popular way of getting online in developing countries and where fewer people can afford a personal computer, are regulated by the Chinese government and by local Chinese government officials. Minors (in China, those under the age of 18) are not allowed into Internet cafés, although this law is widely ignored, and when enforced, has spurred the creation of underground "Black Web Bars" visited by those underage. As of 2008, internet cafés were required to register every customer in a log when they used the internet there. These records may be confiscated by either local government officials or the PSB. To illustrate local regulation of internet cafés, in one instance, a government official in the town of Gedong lawfully banned internet cafés from operating in the town because he believed them to be harmful to minors, who frequented them to play online games (including those considered violent) and surf the internet. However, internet cafés in this town simply went underground, and most minors were not deterred from visiting them. In May 2015, China indefinitely blocked access to the Chinese-language Wikipedia. In contrast (as of 2018), the English-language Wikipedia was blocked only rarely and intermittently. In 2017, China discussed plans for its own version of Wikipedia. As of May 2019, all language versions of Wikipedia have been blocked by the Chinese government.


Blocking methods


Active filtering

One function of the Chinese firewall is to selectively prevent content from being accessed. It is mostly made of Cisco, Huawei, and Semptian hardware. Not all sensitive content gets blocked; in 2007, scholar Jedidiah R. Crandall and others argued that the main purpose is not to block 100%, but rather to flag and to warn, in order to encourage self-censorship. An illustrative but incomplete list of tactics includes:


Active probing

In addition to previously discussed techniques, the CAC is also using active probing in order to identify and block network services that would help escaping the firewall. Multiple services such as Tor or VPN providers reported receiving unsolicited TCP/IP connections shortly after legitimate use, for the purported purpose of
network enumeration Network enumeration is a computing activity in which usernames and info on groups, shares, and services of networked computers are retrieved. It should not be confused with network mapping, which only retrieves information about which servers ar ...
of services, in particular
TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...
/
SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...
and Tor services, with the aim of facilitating IP blocking. For example, shortly after a VPN request is issued by a legitimate Chinese VPN client and passes outbound though the Great Firewall to a hidden VPN IP, the Great Firewall may detect the activity and issue its own active probe to verify the nature of the previously unknown VPN IP and, if the probe confirms the IP is part of a blacklisted VPN, blacklist the IP. This attack can be circumvented with the Obfs4 protocol, which relies on an out-of-band shared secret.


Proxy distribution

The Great Firewall scrapes the IPs of Tor and VPN servers from the official distribution channels, and enumerates them. The strategy to resist this attack is to limit the quantity of proxy IPs revealed to each user and making it very difficult for users to create more than one identity. Academics have proposed solutions such as Salmon. Dynamic IPs are quite effective to flush out from blacklists.


Goals, impact and resistance


Goal of the Firewall

Article 15 of a September 20, 2000 document from the Chinese State Council, posted by the Xinhua News Agency, lists 9 categories of information which should be censored, blocked, or filtered from access to the citizens using the internet within China: # Opposing the basic principles as they are confirmed in the Constitution. # Jeopardizing the security of the nation, divulging state secrets, subverting state power, or jeopardizing the integrity of the nation's unity # Harming the honor or the interests of the nation # Inciting hatred against peoples, racism against peoples, or disrupting the solidarity of peoples # Disrupting national policies on religion, propagating evil cults and feudal superstitions # Spreading rumors, disturbing social order or disrupting social stability # Spreading obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, murder, terror, or abetting the commission of a crime # Insulting or defaming third parties, infringing on the legal rights and interests of third parties # Containing any other content prohibited by law or administrative rules To filter this content, the Chinese government not only uses its own blocking methods, but also heavily relies on internet companies, such as ISPs, social media operators such as Weibo, and others to actively censor their users. This results in private companies censoring their own platform for filtered content, forcing Chinese internet users to use websites not hosted in China to access this information. Much of this information is related to sensitive topics.
FORBIDDEN FEEDS: Government Controls on Social Media in China
" ''PEN America''. (March 13, 2018) p. 24.
The Great Firewall's goal is perceived by the Communist Party as helping to protect the Chinese population by preventing users from accessing these foreign websites which, in their opinion, host content which would be 'spiritual pollution', (清除精神污染运动), as well as information about these sensitive topics. These topics include: * Names of government leaders, such as
Xi Jinping Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, ...
and
Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. Aft ...
* Political movements and protests * Falun Gong and cults * The Tiananmen Square Massacre and other ethnic issues * The
Xinjiang internment camps The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers ( zh, 职业技能教育培训中心, Zhíyè jìnéng jiàoyù péixùn zhōngxīn) by the government of China, are internment camps operated ...
* Discussions of Tibetan Independence Specific English websites blocked or filtered include many popular search engines, social media platforms, information-hosting sites, and video-hosting websites such as Google Search, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, and many more.


Impact on people in China

The Cybersecurity Law behind the firewall being targeted at helping increase internet user privacy, increased protections on personal data, and making companies more responsible for monitoring bad actors, in hopes to make a safer place on the internet for Chinese citizens. Despite this, there have been growing criticisms that the actions of the Chinese government have only hurt Chinese free speech, due to increased censorship, and lack of non-sanctioned sources of information, such as Wikipedia and many English news sources. This has resulted in reports of some cases of legal persecution of those charged with spreading this information. The Chinese government itself does legally support free speech; article 35 of the Constitutions of the People's Republic states that "citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy
freedom of speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration." In recent decades, many criticisms of the Chinese government found that some of these laws are often abused. A study by
PEN America PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922 and headquartered in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of lite ...
claimed that "Some of the government's most rights-abusive laws are aimed at criminalizing free speech that — in the eyes of the government — encourages subversion, separatism, or rejection of the State’s authority." Censorship of sensitive topics in China has also been easier for the government because of the firewall and its filtering. Because the monitoring of social media and chat apps in China presents a possibility of punishment for a user, the discussion of these topics is now limited to the correct thought of the Communist Party, or one's home and private spaces, reducing the chance for information about these topics to spread, reducing any threat of protest against the Communist Party. According to Yaqiu Wang, a prominent human rights researcher, there was a time in China where the internet provided a method for Chinese citizens to learn about the sensitive topics the government had censored in the news, through the access to international news reports and media coverage. She claims that, in the past 10 years, it has been increasingly difficult to access second opinions on events, meaning that students rarely have the opportunity to learn diverging viewpoints — only the correct thought of the Communist Party.


Economic impacts

Aside from the social control aspect, the Great Firewall also acts as a form of
trade protectionism Protectionism, sometimes referred to as trade protectionism, is the economic policy of restricting imports from other countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, import quotas, and a variety of other government regulations. ...
that has allowed China to grow its own internet giants, such as
Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...
, Alibaba, and Baidu. China has its own version of many foreign web properties, for example: Bilibili and Tencent Video (YouTube),
Sina Weibo Sina Weibo (新浪微博) is a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily ac ...
(Twitter),
Qzone Qzone () is a social networking website based in China which was created by Tencent in 2005. It allows users to write blogs, keep diaries, send photos, listen to music, and watch videos. Users can set their Qzone background and select accessori ...
(Facebook),
WeChat WeChat () is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has b ...
(WhatsApp), Ctrip (Orbitz and others), and Zhihu ( Quora). With nearly one quarter of the global internet population (700 million users), the internet behind the GFW can be considered a "parallel universe" to the Internet that exists outside.


Resistance

While the Great Firewall has had an impact on Chinese citizens' ability to use the internet to find information about sensitive topics about the Communist Party, it has not completely stopped them from doing so. The firewall itself has caused much frustration amongst both individuals and internationally operating companies in China, many of whom have turned to VPNs, speaking in codes, and other methods to retain their access to the international internet. The use of VPNs in China can provide individuals access to the international internet, but in China, it can be a potential legal risk. In 2017, the Chinese government declared all unauthorized VPN services to be illegal. An example of the use of this punishment is Vera Zhou, a student at the University of Washington, who, when visiting her Hui parents in
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
, China, used a VPN to access her school homework. She was arrested and sent to a Xinjiang internment camp from October 2017 until March 2018, followed by house arrest after her release. She was not able to return to the US until September 2019.


Circumvention


Methods for bypassing the firewall

Because the Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain names and inspects the data being sent or received, a basic censorship circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Bypassing the firewall is known as (翻墙, "climb over the wall"), and most circumvention tools combine these two mechanisms:"Splinternet Behind the Great Firewall of China: The Fight Against GFW"
, Daniel Anderson, ''Queue'', Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Vol. 10, No. 11 (29 November 2012), . Retrieved 11 October 2013.
* Proxy servers outside China can be used, although using just a simple open proxy (HTTP or SOCKS) without also using an encrypted tunnel (such as HTTPS) does little to circumvent the sophisticated censors. *
Freegate Freegate is a software application developed by Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) that enables internet users from mainland China, South Korea , North Korea, Syria, Vietnam, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and the Uni ...
, Ultrasurf, Psiphon, and
Lantern A lantern is an often portable source of lighting, typically featuring a protective enclosure for the light sourcehistorically usually a candle or a oil lamp, wick in oil, and often a battery-powered light in modern timesto make it easier to ca ...
are free programs designed and experienced with circumventing the China firewall using multiple open proxies. * VPNs (virtual private networks) are one of the most popular tools used by Westerners for bypassing censorship technologies. They use the same basic approaches, proxies, and encrypted channels used by other circumvention tools, but depend on a private host, a virtual host, or an account outside of China, rather than open, free proxies. * Tor partially can be used in China. Since 2010, almost all bridges at TorProject.org are blocked through proxy distribution. Tor still functions in China using independently published Obfs4 bridges and meek. *
I2P The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer (implemented as a mix network) that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic (by using ...
or garlic routing is useful when properties similar to Tor's anonymity are needed. Due to I2P being much less popular than Tor, it has faced little to no blocking attempts. Non-proxy circumvention strategies include: * Using encrypted DNS may bypass blocking of a few sites including TorProject and all of GitHub, which may be used to obtain further circumvention. In 2019 Firefox released an update to make it easy to enable DNS over HTTPS. Despite DNS over encryption, the majority of services remain blocked by IP. * Ignoring TCP reset packets sent by the GFW. Distinguishing them by the TTL value (time to live), and not routing any further packets to sites that have triggered blocking behavior. * There is a popular rumour that using
IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...
bypasses
DPI A Daytona Prototype International (DPi) was a type of sports prototype racing car developed specifically for the International Motor Sports Association's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, as their top class of car, acting as a direct replaceme ...
filtering in China. The academic community is yet to confirm.


Known blocked methods

* The
OpenVPN OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server app ...
protocol is detected and blocked. Connections not using symmetric keys or using "tls-auth" are blocked at handshake, and connections using the new "tls-crypt" option are detected and throttled (under 56kbit/s) by the QoS filtering system. * GRE tunnels and protocols that use GRE (e.g., PPTP) are blocked. *
TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...
, the Great Firewall can identify the difference between HTTPS TLS and other implementations by inspecting the handshake parameters.


Outside China


Exporting Great Firewall technology

Reporters Without Borders suspects that countries such as
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
,
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...
,
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
,
Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...
,
Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...
, and
Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...
have obtained surveillance technology from China, although the censorship in these countries is less stringent than in China. Since at least 2015, the Russian Roskomnadzor agency collaborates with Chinese Great Firewall security officials in implementing its data retention and filtering infrastructure. Especially since
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. A ...
, in order to combat disinformation and enforce the war censorship law, Russia authorities was making internet surveillance system akin to Chinese Great Firewall.


Opposition

Critics have argued that if other big countries begin following China's approach, the whole purpose of the creation of the Internet could be put in jeopardy. If like-minded countries are successful in imposing the same restrictions on their inhabitants and globalized online companies, then the free global exchange of information could cease to exist. The
United States Trade Representative The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting American trade policy. Part of the Executive Office of the President, it is headed by t ...
's (USTR) "National Trade Estimate Report" in 2016 referred the China's digital Great Firewall: "China's filtering of cross-border Internet traffic has posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers." Claude Barfield, the American Enterprise Institute's expert of International trade, suggested that the U.S. government should bring a case against the Firewall, a huge trade barrier, in the World Trade Organization in January 2017. Eight of the 24 more trafficked websites in China have been blocked by the Great Firewall. This has created a burden to foreign suppliers who rely on these websites to sell their products or services. The lobby's 2016 business climate survey showed 79 percent of its members reported a negative impact on business due to internet censorship. According to Stephen Rosen, the GFW is reflective of the Chinese government's fear of civil disobedience or rebellion among the Chinese population against the Chinese Communist Party's rule:


See also

*
List of websites blocked in mainland China Many domain names are blocked in the People's Republic of China (mainland China) under the country's Internet censorship policy, which prevents users from accessing certain websites from within the country. This is a list of the most notable ...
*
Bamboo Curtain The Bamboo Curtain is a Cold War political demarcation between the communist states of East Asia, particularly the People's Republic of China, and the capitalist and non-communist states of East, South, and Southeast Asia. To the north and ...
* Berlin Wall * Censorship in China * Censorship of Wikipedia by China * Cypher * Great Cannon — A
distributed denial-of-service In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conn ...
attack tool co-located with the Great Firewall. * GreatFire — An organization monitoring the Great Firewall *
Green Dam Youth Escort Green Dam Youth Escort () is content-control software for Windows developed in the People's Republic of China (PRC) which, under a directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), was to take effect on 1 July 2009, as ...
*
Great Wall of Sand "Great Wall of Sand" is a name first used in March 2015 by US Admiral Harry Harris, who was commander of the Pacific Fleet, to describe a series of uniquely large-scale land reclamation projects by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the ...
* International Freedom of Expression Exchange – monitorsInternet censorship in China
/ref> * Internet censorship circumvention * Media of China *
Politics of China The People's Republic of China is run by a single party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by the CCP General Secretary who tends to be the paramount leader of China. China is among few contemporary party-led dictatorships to not hold ...
*
Splinternet The splinternet (also referred to as cyber-balkanization or internet balkanization) is a characterization of the Internet as splintering and dividing due to various factors, such as technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, religion, and diver ...
* '' Who Controls the Internet?''


Notes


References


Further reading

* Griffiths, James, "The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet", '' Zed Books'' (May 2019). * Nilekani, Nandan, "Data to the People: India's Inclusive Internet", '' Foreign Affairs'', vol. 97, no. 5 (September / October 2018), pp. 19–26. * Segal, Adam, "When China Rules the Web: Technology in Service of the State", '' Foreign Affairs'', vol. 97, no. 5 (September / October 2018), pp. 10–14, 16–18.


External links

* * * {{Censorship in China Internet censorship in China Firewall software