What type of restrictions are placed on Internet sites in Communist China? What impact on the free flow of ideas has the Internet had in Communist China? Do most mainland Chinese care?
Some sites are blocked. Generally attributed to the Chinese government, but I’ve never paid attention to whether the gvt has come out and said they do this. Geocities, CNN and some Taiwanese government sites can not be accessed directly from China. On the other hand, there are sites like taiwanese newspapers that are no problem to access. Wire services like Reuters and news like Bloomberg are also no problem.
It’s easy enough to get around the blocks by using a proxy server. The proxy I used to use has been down for maybe 6 months and I haven’t bothered to find a new one because frankly I don’t run into enough blocked sites to bother.
One of the big problems right now is that there is so much spam emminating from Chinese ISP’s, that a lot of ISP’s in the US and elsewhere are blocking all traffic. This was in the news recently and you can probably Google more info.
The government is actively trying to encourage internet use. There are internet bars and cafes all around China. Shanghai alone has hundreds of government owned internet access rooms. Most have between 10-30 computers and charge about rmb10/hour (USD1.25/hour) for access. The main Shanghai Public Library charges rmb5/hour.
Free flow of information is changing China, but some of the reactions are a little different than you might expect. The Hainan plane incident and embassy bombing in Belgrade was all over the internet in Chinese, but it was primarily self-centered nationalistic bombastic swill pushed out by enraged students. Although there was plenty of more balanced international coverage available, most of the Chinese I knew were not interested in looking at a variety of sources and got most of there info off the internet via chatrooms.
Another ancedote. on 9-11 I was in a bar and watched the second plane crash live. I then went home, and told my wife. We had just moved and didn’t have a TV. She didn’t believe what was happening. The US internet sites were bogged down by the traffic, but I had a Chinese portal up and newswire feeds in Chinese on the screen in seconds. Not sure what time it was, but before the first collapse happened.
I haven’t seen the number of internet users in China recently. The number will probably surprise you. Again google is your friend.
my 2 cents :
i always figured that if an ISP ever blocked any website, and i couldn’t get a proxy or similar workaround, i’d just dial-in to a U.S. ISP over an international call and access the website. I know this is an expensive option, but if the info on the website was important enough i reckon i’d probably do this… i wonder whether China has any checks in place for this sort of work-around…
Thanks for the link Cisco.
xash, you are correct, the international dialing solution is no problem. Oddly enough, dailing Hong Kong is more expensive than regular long distance and less expensive than international rates. Hong Kong does big business in web hosting Chinese sites for people, for whatever reason, are uncomfortable hosting in China.