‘If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in,”
– Deng Xiaoping
Imagine: you study at university in China in 1989. Mao Zedong went under 13 years ago. Now some leaders in government are suggesting democratic reforms. You want to support them by protesting against inflation, bad living conditions and dictatorship and take your classmates to go to the biggest square in China – Tiananmen – on the 3th of June with a poster saying "Liberty”. But in the evening the government tanks moved into the square and opened fire on their own civilians. Somebody came alone in front of the tanks and was standing there for a couple of minutes.
Nobody would have ever known his name – he would be remembered as the Unknown rebel and became the symbol of unarmed protest around the world. But many of your friends, townsmen were killed or injured, all in all, around a few thousands.
In five years, in 1994, you would not be able to find a photo of the Unknown rebel or write in any form 4.6.89, even "the very day" on the Internet because of the censorship. Chinese have no need to imagine, it’s their communist reality.
In five years, in 1994, you would not be able to find a photo of the Unknown rebel or write in any form 4.6.89, even "the very day" on the Internet because of the censorship. Chinese have no need to imagine, it’s their communist reality.
CHINA VS WORLD
From the 2th to the 10th of June it is prohibited to change your name or avatar on social media and games. You can not mention Winnie the Pooh – he is resembling Xi Jinping, the leader of China. Your goods at the stores are scanned with the special cameras: if the diapers are bought – you are a trustworthy citizen, but if you often play computer games, you are shame of the nation and your social rating is going down, just as in the first episode of the third season of the "Black mirror" sitcom. 23 millions of chinese could not buy plane tickets because of the social rating in 2019. Your points are everywhere on the web, even in dating apps in 2024. If you are a good communist and regularly write denunciations, politicians can bestow on you, for instance, with a new phone. The ruling party chooses any ways to strengthen their power for decades. Nowadays there are over 60.000 limitations of the Internet in China.
"The Golden Shield Project" was run in 2003. It is a system for registering the real names of Internet users and complex interaction between various Chinese providers and police agencies. Unofficially it is called "Great Firewall of China" with the reference to the Great Wall. The Chinese government uses it for better control of population along with 11 other golden projects monitoring citizens’ taxes, finance, discipline and other living spheres. Deng Xiaoping, the leader of China from 1978 to 1989, explained the purpose of the project as an open window – the metaphor of the market economy and connections with foreign investors. The government wanted a free market of goods, but not of ideas.
"The Golden Shield Project" was run in 2003. It is a system for registering the real names of Internet users and complex interaction between various Chinese providers and police agencies. Unofficially it is called "Great Firewall of China" with the reference to the Great Wall. The Chinese government uses it for better control of population along with 11 other golden projects monitoring citizens’ taxes, finance, discipline and other living spheres. Deng Xiaoping, the leader of China from 1978 to 1989, explained the purpose of the project as an open window – the metaphor of the market economy and connections with foreign investors. The government wanted a free market of goods, but not of ideas.
The system is able to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through, and consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the six Internet gateways.
"If you log onto a computer in downtown Beijing and try to access a Web site hosted on a server in Chicago, your Internet browser sends out a request for that specific Web page. The request travels over one of the Chinese pipelines until it hits the routers at the border, where it is then examined. If the request is for a site that is on the government's blacklist – and there are lots of them – it won't get through. If the site isn't blocked wholesale, the routers then examine the words in the requested page's Internet address for blacklisted terms" – Clive Thompson, a New York Times journalist, who travelled to China and talked to dozens of national entrepreneurs and interviewed Google’s CEO, explains how "The Golden Shield Project" is organised. For example, searching the BBC* site in Beijing you are able to read articles about sport, but not news. If you google "Tiananmen Square" there will be photos of tourists and happy Chinese couples, not the protests of 1989.
"If you log onto a computer in downtown Beijing and try to access a Web site hosted on a server in Chicago, your Internet browser sends out a request for that specific Web page. The request travels over one of the Chinese pipelines until it hits the routers at the border, where it is then examined. If the request is for a site that is on the government's blacklist – and there are lots of them – it won't get through. If the site isn't blocked wholesale, the routers then examine the words in the requested page's Internet address for blacklisted terms" – Clive Thompson, a New York Times journalist, who travelled to China and talked to dozens of national entrepreneurs and interviewed Google’s CEO, explains how "The Golden Shield Project" is organised. For example, searching the BBC* site in Beijing you are able to read articles about sport, but not news. If you google "Tiananmen Square" there will be photos of tourists and happy Chinese couples, not the protests of 1989.
But before Google was expelled from China in 2002 it worked in a different way, just showing the sites in Chinese. So it gained 25% of traffic and was still ruled from California. But Google’s leave was not such a big problem for the country. Andrew Lih, a Chinese-American professor of media studies at the University of Hong Kong said about the preference in Baidu to american Yahoo: "There's now a very strong sense of pride in supporting the local guy," – the situation is the same with Google. Censorship is not only about political goals, but about supporting national technologies and the economy. Charles Chao, the president of Sina, the country's biggest news site, claims: "I don't want to call it censorship. It's like this in every country: they have a bias. There are taboos you can't talk about in the U.S., and everyone knows it". Chinese people can not discuss ideologies online, and it is not news nor a problem for them. Firstly, they are able to complain about local authorities. Secondly, they are able to do it in real life, and use the Internet for posting lifestyle content, talking about the art of communicating.
Such a mindset was a shock for western developers. At the same time, they agreed to ban political non-communist content in 2006 trying to genuinely improve the quality of Chinese information and trying to do their best within a bad system. But due to mass surveillance and reading emails there was a conflict between the Chinese government and Americans, and Google had to leave completely in 2010.
In our world absolute freedom is a myth. We all have our own demands and the government should normally meet them. Unfortunately, political leaders neither want, nor can satisfy all of them. The complex balance of use and harm, personal and public, creates such an environment in which some thoughts are restricted. Media companies know this as well as their own ambitions.
