Great Firewall

Not to be confused with Great Wall of China.

The People's Republic of China (does some things, or) uses different measures to control access to the internet. Some of these measures are specific laws, other measures are technical. One of he technical measures is called the Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng). China uses it to regulate the Internet domestically.[1] Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic.[2] The Great Firewall works by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If such 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.[3] The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking popular foreign websites (e.g. Google Search,[4] Facebook,[5] Twitter,[6] Wikipedia,[7][8] and others) and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.[9][10]

Besides censorship, the Great Firewall has also influenced the development of China's internal internet economy by giving preference to domestic companies.[11] The Great Firewall can also change the result of searches for problematic content. An example of this was when Ai Weiwei was arested. Sometimes the authorities ask big companies to remove content. One example of this was that they asked that Apple remove the publication Quartz from its Chinese app store. Quarts had reported on the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.[12][13]

The term Great Firewall of China is a combination of the word firewall with the Great Wall of China. The phrase "Great Firewall of China" was first used in print by Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé in 1997.[14][15]

References

  1. ↑ Clayton, Richard; Murdoch, Steven J.; Watson, Robert N. M. "Ignoring the great firewall of china". International Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies.
  2. ↑ Mozur, Paul (13 September 2015). "Baidu and CloudFlare Boost Users Over China's Great Firewall". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 January 2019. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
  3. ↑ Clayton, Richard; Murdoch, Steven J.; Watson, Robert N. M. (2006). "Ignoring the Great Firewall of China". In Danezis, George; Golle, Philippe (eds.). Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4258. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 20–35. doi:10.1007/11957454_2. hdl:1811/72793. ISBN 978-3-540-68793-1.
  4. ↑ "google.com is blocked in China | GreatFire Analyzer". en.greatfire.org. Archived from the original on 2014-08-05. Retrieved 2020-01-18.
  5. ↑ "How China's social media users created a new language to beat censorship on COVID-19". Amnesty International. 6 March 2020. Archived from the original on 3 April 2020. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  6. ↑ "China Blocks Access To Twitter, Facebook After Riots". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 19 September 2010. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  7. ↑ "Wikipedia founder defends decision to encrypt the site in China". The Verge. 4 September 2015. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
  8. ↑ Skipper, Ben (7 December 2015). "China's government has blocked Wikipedia in its entirety again". International Business Times UK. Archived from the original on 3 May 2018. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  9. ↑ Mozur, Paul; Goel, Vindu (5 October 2014). "To Reach China, LinkedIn Plays by Local Rules". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  10. ↑ Branigan, Tania (28 June 2012). "New York Times launches website in Chinese language". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 September 2017. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  11. ↑ Denyer, Simon (23 May 2016). "China's scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 6 December 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  12. ↑ Miller, Chance (2019-10-09). "Apple removes 'Quartz' news app from Chinese App Store". 9to5Mac. Archived from the original on 2019-10-10. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  13. ↑ Statt, Nick (2019-10-09). "Apple removes Quartz news app from the Chinese App Store over Hong Kong coverage". The Verge. Archived from the original on 2019-10-10. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  14. ↑ Lanfranco, Edward (9 September 2005). "The China Yahoo! welcome: You've got Jail!". UPI. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
  15. ↑ Barme, Geremie R.; Ye, Sang (6 January 1997). "The Great Firewall of China". Wired. Archived from the original on 2016-01-01. Retrieved 29 December 2015.


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