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10 ways the Chinese Internet is different from yours[Slides]

networkworld.com — We all know that China censors the Internet for its citizens behind "The Great Firewall of China," but what are the consequences of that? Here's a balanced look at the pros and cons of the Chinese approach.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 14, 2008

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  • EASwanson, on 05/14/2008, -5/+123I
    Hate
    Websites
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    Make
    You
    Click
    Multiple
    Buttons
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  • Hisnameis, on 05/14/2008, -5/+106all they can google is pandas?
  • asspants, on 05/14/2008, -2/+64...or we could just slowly roll it out, as interwebs engineers deem necessary instead of letting the government put it's hands all over ***** they shouldn't.
  • inactive, on 05/14/2008, -2/+57The geeks in the know in China have access to an uncensored internet provided by another Country..
  • poidh, on 05/14/2008, -14/+65Pros and cons? There are no pros to censoring the internet.
  • ell0bo, on 05/14/2008, -3/+48They can say that entire title with one character?
  • AutumnWindz, on 05/14/2008, -4/+45Buried for being intentionally misleading and largely devoid of actual content.
    One picture, for example, is especially apparent: the one showing some people sitting in front of a row of computers with a cop behind them is not, as the caption would have you believe, a picture of people working to censor the internet. It is a bunch of middle schoolers getting busted for being in an internet cafe (notice the Counterstrike on one of the screens) illegally - the age for this is 18 in China and there were many large campaigns to keep kids out of internet cafes, which can be quite a bad place to be in China.
  • toddomatic, on 05/20/2008, -7/+46Question: How would you even know that your internets are being censored? (How do we know ours is not?)
  • tomz17, on 05/14/2008, -5/+40How do we know our internet is not censored....

    Easy... think of the most offensive or outrageous thing you could possibly think of... (did we land on the moon, 2 girls one cup, who killed JFK, alien coverups, tell me more about scientology, Bush sucks, etc. etc.) Then look it up on the internet... It's all being discussed openly. Our government is not censoring your internet. Better yet, just visit wikileaks!

    Now go to China... look up Tienemann Square, or your favorite religious cult, Taiwan, CPC sucks... etc. etc. yeah... see the difference?
  • binorgog, on 08/07/2008, -1/+3311. It's in chinese
  • clickx, on 05/14/2008, -7/+38Does a big thing come up saying you can't access the page cause it is available in your country (aside from youtube).

  • axisofphilippe, on 05/14/2008, -9/+35Not Mentioned:
    11. It has straight pubic hair.
  • Hangly, on 05/15/2008, -6/+34James Fallows is full of crap. So is this article.

    #1. It's only slower in some places. In the bigger more modern cities it's just as fast or faster than the US (though nowhere near as fast as Korea.)

    #2. Only specific keywords are monitored, only in Chinese, and the monitoring is mostly passive. If you try to google the Tiananmen Massacre you will lose google access for about a minute, but then it will come back on again. Nothing in English is monitored/filtered.

    #3.Yes, some sites are blocked. Not very many though, and the blockage is usually temporary. That creepy red screen is some artist's conception. Also, censorship is decreasing. Wikipedia and google video are currently up after being unavailable for years.

    #4 I have used the internet in China for four years and never had a blackout.

    #5. The censorship is all done via site-blocking. See item 3. There are no cops looking over your shoulder in the netcafes; whoever decided to use that photo is a moron.

    #6. There is TONS of porn. Even mainstream news sites have links to softcore porn.

    #7. The Chinese internet is dangerous as *****.

    #8. There is PLENTY of spam.

    #9. True.

    #10. True.

    So hooray for ignorant anti-China fearmongering.
  • invinciblechunk, on 05/14/2008, -3/+28So, does 42% of spam originate in the U.S.? Or does 42% of spam originate from U.S. IP addresses, most of which were compromised by foreign botnets? Or is the figure just made up entirely?
  • inactive, on 05/14/2008, -0/+24Sure there are: less spam, control over hackers, control over illegal content.
    The benefits certainly don't outweigh the downsides as far as Westerners are concerned, but you can't say there are NO pros here.
    Same logic as saying there's NO pro to invading a weak nation. Sure there is: it props up your economy due to all the wartime spending. Doesn't make it right, but there are pros there. Why do you think Hitler still commanded respect in Germany long after he was dead? He wasn't ALL bad, just really bad.
  • inactive, on 05/14/2008, -2/+21Gotta agree. "The engineers" built the internet and know what they're doing. "The government" gets letters from people with too much time on their hands, powerful lobby groups with economic motivations, and committees full of bright people who collectively become total morons.
    Now I'm pretty socialist for Digg, but keep the ***** governments away from the Internet. This thing is bigger and smarter than they will ever be.
  • random12345, on 11/16/2008, -2/+20i thought thats all google is for... at least for me :(
  • Awspire, on 05/14/2008, -4/+21there should be a gov't directive to do it

    ***** Government directives, I'm for popular demand.
  • Mootabolife, on 05/14/2008, -8/+27.. and they are promptly taken out back and shot.
  • zeptobyte, on 05/14/2008, -0/+13Interesting. That would explain why they all look like they're depressed and about to cry.
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -0/+15汝与华网之十别

    there, 7 characters
  • Jorin, on 05/14/2008, -1/+16Yep. In Canada CTV and Viacom have agreed to censor Canadian access to Comedy Central material in order to preserve CTV's interest in the content. Canadians cannot watch Daily Show and Colbert Report episodes from the official CN site. Pandora Radio and Demonoid were also censored in Canada.
  • nahsrocketeer75, on 05/14/2008, -3/+17Much of the information in this comes from The Atlantic's James Fallows, who on his blog notes that it also "includes at least one thing I didn't know before." He doesn't say what it is, though. Curious. http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/ ...
  • RevJonathan, on 05/14/2008, -2/+14I imagine that China would be accounting for a hell of a lot more than the US if it weren't for the censors.

    I'd rather produce a lot of penis enlargement ads and be able to complain about the government than not.
  • efitz11, on 05/14/2008, -2/+14where is the "bury as slideshow" option?
  • Myonosken, on 05/14/2008, -3/+15Because someone somewhere would have ***** noticed given every government would have different censors?
  • lucidguru, on 05/14/2008, -2/+16I wish it would have talked about proxies... When people are spying on you encryption and proxies end up becoming the norm.
  • Myonosken, on 05/14/2008, -6/+19It actually explained some. No one is saying it has a good pro, but its called giving a balanced view.
  • Leetamus, on 05/14/2008, -0/+11hmm is is just me or is there just 10 random pictures? I can look at pics of pandas with laptops from here in Canada too! What the ***** is this?
  • Jo9100, on 05/14/2008, -2/+14http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/
  • essjay, on 05/14/2008, -1/+13... and all they can pander to is google.
  • hklrs, on 05/14/2008, -3/+14..you´re a big *****
  • seshomarusamma, on 05/15/2008, -0/+11this is *****, the firewall doesn't target individuals. Chinese companies can openly sell VPN and tor is available for download.
    i use tor all the time and i'm alive
  • Awspire, on 05/14/2008, -2/+15Meh, its just a slideshow, in fact it was rather well implemented. I hate sites that have you go from link to link just so their ads will refresh every 100 words.
  • mrb4b00, on 05/14/2008, -3/+15Going to China for a month or two every year, I find that all these censorship is way overhyped. In reality, 99% of the sites you access in America is accessible in China.
    Also, the culture and language there is so much different there that there is little point to go to Western sites.
    The real problem is the slowness of their internet, I could barely download my mp3s at 10kbs over DSL there...
  • jjpertusch, on 05/14/2008, -1/+11less spam, more safety, based on IPv6... well, at least the list ended on some high notes.
  • mrwalsh, on 05/14/2008, -0/+11Really, this is overblown. I've lived in the US and now in China and it's no different. If I want to talk about something like the IS NO religion I just go ahead and post about NO GOD NEED TO TALK ABOUT NOT NEEDED like any other citizen in any other country. What's the big deal? Believe me I've posted some stuff about some of China's politicians like NONE that would have been censored if things were as bad as is perceived. Like the scandal surrounding FAULT OF BUSH. Or the NOT CHINA INVOLVED OTHER COUNTRY CAUSED coverup. Or the situation in Tibet WHERE ALL THINGS NOW OK. I even have a website where you can read more about CHINA IS WORLD FUTURE at http://CHINA.COM. I mean, THERE ARE NO problems in China but internet access is not one of them.
  • mrrx, on 05/14/2008, -2/+11And clicking the link resulted in -

    "Because of the ever stricter measures of censorship China imposes on the Internet, the team of www.greatfirewallofchina.org at present can no longer vouch for the reliability of its test tool. We have therefore decided to take the test tool offline.

    Please visit our FAQ page for the latest news about China and the Internet, and more...

    Thanks for all your comments and overwhelming support over the past year! Let us persist in our dialogue with China and hope that the Games will lead to more openness! "
  • Neoanarchist, on 05/14/2008, -0/+9***** I forgot to add that Cisco routers and firewalls are used for the Great Firewall. Cicso states that they are the same routers they sell to many companies wishing to monitor their network's internet activity.

    Overall, knowledge or information about the Great Firewall is pretty low within China. Many Chinese citizens don't know any different so it is not a big deal to them.
  • iDoraemon, on 05/14/2008, -1/+11The thing with internet access in China though is that even though it's possible to bypass imposed censorship using proxies, the internet is already slow as it is over there. By using proxies to bypass various restrictions by the government, it's true that one can eventually gain access to once-blocked sites. On the other hand, your typical Chinese citizen will be able to access non-censored, government-approved competing media much faster. Along with that, the people there also have access to freely-available newspapers and magazines with no problems. If a regular person in China had the choice of getting quick access to already available media or wait quite some time to access alternative material using proxies, the former always wins.

    The Chinese government knows this quite well, and they're able to achieve pretty much unfettered success in the country without pissing off the general populace. The real problem with internet in China isn't the reality with censorship. It's that illusion by the Chinese that there isn't really much censorship or that the censorship is a good thing.
  • egthareal, on 05/14/2008, -2/+11I just got back from China literally a day or two ago and I must agree that there isn't that much censorship as there is forced slow access. Which is almost worse. It's like well I wanted to visit this site twenty minutes ago but I'm sure I can find a quicker substitute out here.
  • Neoanarchist, on 05/14/2008, -1/+12I just read an article in Network World that detailed the technical dynamics of "the Great Firewall". It was a pretty interesting read. It said the government knows full well about proxies and VPNs and could easily restrict them should they deem it necessary. However, VPNs are most often used in conjunction with other businesses so it would be detrimental to economic activity and would cause a huge backlash. The article also mentioned that proxy use is actually pretty low and that most Chinese people aren't the least bit angered or even perturbed by the firewall. It stated that the government response to proxies was as long as they weren't used heavily it wasn't an issue warranting a crackdown.
  • Hangly, on 05/15/2008, -0/+10No. That big red graphic is some idiot artists conception. All you get is a 503 error.
  • akphidelt, on 05/14/2008, -0/+10Some of those kids in slide six look like they're about to get beat by that crazy ass looking lady!
  • amida, on 05/14/2008, -0/+7It's not a Rick Roll, it's from a documentary about the "Tank Man" who stood in front of the tanks advancing on Tiananmen Square in 1989. It starts, depressingly, with some students looking at a picture and not recognizing it.
  • Hangly, on 05/15/2008, -0/+7That's incredibly well done! Dugg.
  • BTraina, on 05/15/2008, -0/+8Us americans enjoy googling cats with crazy and wacky captions.
  • vkorobkax, on 05/14/2008, -1/+9Untrue. About one fifth of the one billion overweight or obese people in the world are Chinese. There are a hell of a lot of fat people in China.
  • inactive, on 05/14/2008, -11/+19they're probably burying the ***** out of this article, the internet must be riot over there
  • KMartSheriff, on 05/15/2008, -0/+8If the US is responsibly for all that spam then how come I'm getting 'GREETINGS MY FELLOW BROTHER IN CHRIST" from danjuma in Nigeria every 5 seconds?
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