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The Great Firewall of China is a blanket term thought to have been coined in an article in Wired magazine in 1997 and used ironically by international, including Chinese, media to refer to legislation and projects initiated by the Chinese government (which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP) that attempt to regulate the internet in Mainland China. These CCP attempts at regulation include criminalizing certain online activities, blocking from view selected websites, and filtering key words out of searches.

History

China did not have a cohesive system of networked computers until 1994. However, internet use in China grew extremely rapidly; while in 1997 there were only 250,000 people online in China, by 1999 that number had grown to 3.5 million. By 2004, there were 80 million users, and as of 2007 there were 162 million users, ranking China just behind the United States (210 million users) in number of people online. However, these numbers should also be framed in the fact that given their respective populations, only 12% of Chinese people are online whereas in the United States, 70% of the population is connected to the internet.

The CCP rapidly took a stance on the internet, calling it a "双面剪" or "double-edged sword," explaining that it believed in the great potential of the internet to benefit people, but also thought it was likely to cause harm in many ways. The concept of legislating against "social harmfulness," or "卫辉还" has long been part of CCP rhetoric and is widely recognized in China and in Chinese law as a justification for its actions and laws.

The CCP passed a law in 1997 called CL97 that criminalized specific activities it deemed "cyber crimes." The crimes are:

In 1993, China initiated the Golden Shield Project (金盾工程), a massive surveillance and censoring system manned by both civilians and CCP officials. However, by 200x the project was widely considered ineffectual as individuals had adapted by using proxy servers to circumnavigate to the blocked content.

Moreover, some research evidence has indicated that suspicion of the "Great Firewall" in China and the sense that one is being surveyed online leads to chilled speech and self-censorship, which has been more effective at blocking internet content than any Chinese project or law has been.

Effectiveness

The CCP has had some success in filtering key words out of internet searches and blocking access to selected sites. For example, web sites for The New York Times and Washington Post were for the lay user inaccessible in Mainland China until 2002.

Internet cafes, which are very popular in China, as of 200x were required to register every customer in a log when they used the internet there.

By 2008, several U.S. internet companies, including Yahoo, Google, and AOL, have made agreements with the Chinese government to filter out certain words from their searches.

Administration of

Cisco