Internet Censorship In Chinese Cyberspace

China's Internet filtering regime (the Great FireWall) is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. The internet censorship in Chinese cyberspace is pervasive, sophisticated, andeffective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control.

The Great FireWall is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an insult to the spirit of online freedom, the Chinese authorities use it blocking thousands of websites and censoring online news.

Because of Chinese government have deployed colossal human and financial resources to obstruct online free expression. Chinese news websites and blogs have been brought under the editorial control of the propaganda apparatus at both the national and local levels.

The use of the Internet keeps growing in China. The country now has more than 160 million Internet users and at least 1.3 million websites. But the Internet's promise of free expression and information has been nipped in the bud by the Chinese government's online censorship and surveillance system. The Govermment is afraid of reign, they want to control all of the society.

In my early report, the Chinese authorities blocks more than thousand of dedicated server in HeNan and GuangDong without any explanation, Also they use the Greate FireWall to blocks some great website like FeedBurner,Blogspot,Youtube and Flickr, prevent people to meet the unwanted material.

The Chinese authorities have a longstanding set of policies restricting the information to which citizens are exposed, and that which they may themselves publicly say. The Internet poses a new challenge to such censorship, both because of the sheer breadth of content typically available, and because sources of content are so often remote from Chinese jurisdiction, and thus much more difficult to penalize for breaching restrictions on permissible materials. There is some evidence that the government has attempted to prevent the spread of unwanted material by preventing the spread of the Internet itself, but a concomitant desire to capture the economic benefits of networked computing has led to a variety of strategies to split the difference.

For example, the government might encourage Internet access through cybercafes rather than in private spaces so that customers' surfing can be physically monitored by others in the cafe. As a technical matter, anecdotal reports have described a shifting set of barriers to surfing the web from Chinese points of access -- sites that are reported unavailable or domain names that are unknown to the system or that lead to unexpected destinations, individual pages that are blocked, and the use of search keywords that results in temporary limits to further searches.

The Great FireWall was bought from Cisco Inc. , the technologies that Cisco sold to China for backbone routing purposes have packet filtering capability, allowing the routers to filter bi-directionally at thepacket level and to implement up to 750,000 different filtering rules. These systems are designed to combat various Internet attacks, including Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and the spread of worms andviruses. These same techniques can beapplied to block political content. The particular technique described in Cisco Systems to be Key Supplier for Building China's Nation-Wide IP Backbone. Also, China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects.

Activists and human rights organizations have for years charged Cisco and other Westerncorporations with actively assisting China in developing censorship and surveillance systems. Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simplysell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what theyhave bought.

Google Blogspot And Google Pages Unblocked In China

The free blog hosting services Google Blogspot and the free homepage hosting Google Pages are accessible in China today.

Some days before, Google BlogSpot is blocked again after the the 17th Party Congress finished in BeiJing , but after YouTube unblocked, the Google Blogspot and Google Pages both unblocked now, that surprise me, those blocking are extremely arbitrary.

Hope that is not temporary unblocked.

Update: Google Blogger(Blogspot) was blocked in China again a week ago.

YouTube, Have a Merry Halloween

A Very Merry Halloween to all users of YouTube in China, Google's YouTube became available again in China today.

YouTube's blocking two weeks ago seemed to be related with the 17th Communist Party Congress, the blocking also coincided with Google's launch of two Chinese language YouTube sites,  one in Taiwan and one in Hong Kong.

Now YouTube is back in mainland China. The unblock of YouTube has proved that the blocking of China Great FireWall is extremely arbitrary, but why unblock youtube in this time? I think the reason is the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party had finished.

I tested the Global YouTube, Hong Kong YouTube, Taiwan YouTube, all became available, that's not bad, also I tested my YouTube account, I find my account in the Global YouTube also can be used in Hong Kong YouTube and Taiwan YouTube, that mean the different site of YouTube use an unified account.

Global YouTube Available

HongKong YouTube Available

TaiWan YouTube Available

How To Visit Google BlogSpot In China

Most efforts(using proxy or editing hosts file, for example) to bypass The Wall can work, . I'm going to write 2 methods dedicated for blogspot.

The easier way is to use pkblogs, who provides accesss to blogs "blocked in India, Pakistan, Iran or China". But I think pkblogs itself may be blocked soon.

The more technical way (by Dance In The Dark) is to assign "*.blogspot.com" to an alternative IP address which is not banned yet, by configuring proxy settings of Firefox with following steps:

1. Create a new text file and write the following codes
   

   function FindProxyForURL(url,host){
   if(dnsDomainIs(host, ".blogspot.com")){
     return "PROXY 72.14.219.190:80";
   }
   }

   
   


2. Save it as C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\local\proxy.pac


3. In Firefox, open Tools(menu)->Options(menu)->Advanced(tab)->Network(tab)->Connect, Settings(button)->Automatically Proxy Configuration URL(box), enter:
   

   
   

   file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/local/proxy.pac

   
   


4. Say OK to close all dialogs. Now you can try someone.blogspot.com

Problems:

1. The IP we used here 72.14.219.190 may be banned in the future, you will need to google for new solutions at that time.


2. IE is also known to support auto proxy configuration, but I can't get it work. (via)

Google BlogSpot Blocked Again In China

The most popular blog host BlogSpot is blocked again after the the 17th Party Congress finished in BeiJing.

In the south China, BlogSpot is not accessible all the while, but in the north China, BlogSpot was suddenly accessible on October 15 in BeiJing. The 17th Party Congress started on October 15. Some believe that the current unblocking may be related to the 17th Party Congress, temporarily allowing the major foreign journalists to access their favorite BlogSpot. So the BlogSpot was only unblock in north China, on October 15. After the Congress's finishing, the BlogSpot is blocked again.

An unblocking of the site last year led to the availability of a Shanghai-based foreign blogger known as Chinabounder, whose blog recounted the author's sexual exploits with Chinese women while working as an English teacher. The posts ultimately led to an unsuccessful hunt for the author and a temporary closing of the blog(via).

Baidu Hijacking Google, Yahoo, Microsoft In China

Numerous users find that if they trying to access Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft search engines from China are being redirected to Chinese-owned search engine Baidu yesterday.

Chinese DNS servers are under government control, some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but some suspect that Chinese government has unilaterally blocked there US search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.

Hijacking Google Blog Search

Hijacking Yahoo Search

Hijacking Microsoft Live Search

Earlier this week, Beijing has been ramping up its filtering of political sites in an attempt to stifle political dissent leading up to the Communist Party Congress, a meeting in which leaders are selected to serve under the president for the next five years. The most popular online video website YouTube is also blocked in China yesterday.

YouTube Blocked In China

The most popular online video website - YouTube, seem to be blocked in China. The Chinese users are unable to access YouTube now. YouTube which has been acquired by Google Inc since Oct, 2006, is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on the web.

The current blocking may be related to the Communist Party Congress, which began on 15 October in Beijing and ends on Sunday. Chinese authorities regularly blocks access to websites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects. YouTube could conceivably carry some information the Chinese authorities think it shouldn't. That's what we have been. Blocked. Great Fire Wall-ed. 

Now YouTube is inaccessible for most everyone in China, the current block is actually a bit more restrictive than the other block, since any mention of the string "www.youtube.com" in any URL seems to be blocked.

For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=www.youtube.com (if you are out of China, you should use http://www.google.cn/search?q=www.youtube.com) will not go through, and will get you a "Connection reset" error.

That mean the YouTube are not viewable via normal proxy. Chinese user must use secured transmission (SSL , HTTPS) to visit YouTube, that is not suitable because of the slow and instable connection.

The Chinese authorities also block some great website like FeedBurner, Flickr, WordPress, BlogSpot and Wikipedia.