Great Firewall of China

The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; Chinese: jīndùn gongcheng) started in 1998, began the process in November of 2003, the first part of the project passed the national inspection on November 16, 2006 in Beijing.

It is known outside mainland China as the Great Firewall of China (in reference both to its role as a network firewall and to the ancient Great Wall of China). A major part of the project includes the ability to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet gateways. The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical.

History

The first part of the project lasted three years. According to China Central Television's report, the project has already spent 64 billion RMB, about 8 billion US dollars.

The second part began in 2006. It will last for two years.

Technical information

Some commonly used methods for censoring content are:

• IP blocking. The access to a certain IP address is denied. If the target website is hosted in a shared hosting server, all websites on the same server will be blocked. This affects all TCP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP. A typical circumvention method is to find proxies that have access to the target websites, but proxies may be jammed or blocked, and some websites such as Wikipedia also block proxies. Some large websites such as Google have allocated additional IP addresses to circumvent the block, but later the block was extended to cover the new IPs.
• DNS filtering and redirection. Don't resolve domain names, or return incorrect IP addresses. This affects all TCP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP. A typical circumvention method is to find a domain name server that resolves domain names correctly, but domain name servers are subject to blockage as well, especially IP blocking. Another workaround is to bypass DNS if the IP address is obtainable from other sources and is not blocked. Examples are modifying the Hosts file or typing the IP address instead of the domain name in an Web browser.
• URL filtering. Scan the requested Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string for target keywords regardless of the domain name specified in the URL. This affects the HTTP protocol. Typical circumvention methods are to use escaped characters in the URL, or to use encrypted protocols such as VPN and SSL.
• Packet filtering. Terminate TCP packet transmissions when a certain amount of controversial keywords are detected. This affects all TCP protocols such as HTTP, FTP or POP, but Search engine pages are more likely to be censored. Typical circumvention methods are to use encrypted protocols such as VPN and SSL, to escape the HTML content, or reducing the TCP/IP stack's size thus reduce the amount of text contained in a given packet.
• Connection reset. If a previous TCP connection is blocked by the filter, future connection attempts from both sides will also be blocked for up to 30 minutes. Depending on the location of the block, other users or websites may be also blocked if the communication are routed to the location of the block. A circumvention method is to ignore the reset packet sent by the firewall.

Censored content

Research into mainland Chinese Internet censorship has shown that censored websites include:

• Websites belonging to outlawed groups, such as Falun Gong
• News sources that often cover some taboo topics such as police brutality, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, and Marxist sites. These sites include Voice of America, BBC News, and Yahoo! Hong Kong
• Sites related with Taiwan government, media, or other organizations, including sites dedicated to religious content, such as CBETA, a site that provides the complete Chinese Buddhist canon
• Web sites that contain obscenity, pornography and criminal activity
• Sites linked with the Dalai Lama and his International Tibet Independence Movement, including his teachings
• Websites deemed "subversive", such as BBC Sport.

Blocked websites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines, such as Baidu and Google China. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.

According to the New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist. However, once unblocked, the websites will be reindexed.

See also

• Internet censorship in mainland China
• Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China
• Internet in the People's Republic of China
• Media in mainland China
• International Freedom of Expression Exchange - monitors Internet censorship in China
• Politics of China
• Human rights in the People's Republic of China
• Jingjing and Chacha
• Öser
• Shi Tao

External Links

• Breaking Through the “Golden Shield”