History of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Encyclopedia
A history of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China has existed since Internet
access in the People's Republic of China
(PRC) became widespread.
The special administrative regions of Hong Kong
and Macau
have their own legal systems and therefore do not share the same history in this regard.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
access in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(PRC) became widespread.
The special administrative regions of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
have their own legal systems and therefore do not share the same history in this regard.
Timeline
- In 2003, Internet activists and journalists led an online uprising that eventually forced the abolishment of the Custody and repatriationCustody and repatriationCustody and repatriation was an administrative procedure, established in 1982 and ended in 2003, by which the police in the People's Republic of China could detain people if they did not have a residence permit or temporary living permit , and return them to the place where they could legally...
procedure, and the establishment of constitutional committee of the Standing Committee of the National People's CongressStanding Committee of the National People's CongressThe Standing Committee of the National People's Congress is a committee of about 150 members of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China , which is convened between plenary sessions of the NPC. It has the constitutional authority to modify legislation within limits set by...
.
- On July 11, 2003, the PRC government granted licenses to open Internet cafeInternet cafeAn Internet café or cybercafé is a place which provides internet access to the public, usually for a fee. These businesses usually provide snacks and drinks, hence the café in the name...
chains. The licenses were awarded to 10 firms, including three affiliated to the PRC Ministry of Culture: China Audio-Visual Publishing House, which plans to set up 50,000 cafes in 40 cities in three years, the China Cultural Relics Information Center and the China National Library. A fourth operator, China Youth Net, is affiliated with the politically powerful Central Committee of China Youth League. The other six include state-owned telecoms operators such as China United Telecommunications Corporation, parent of China Unicom Ltd, Great Wall Broadband Network Service Co Ltd, or Internet service providers such as www.readchina.com, which belongs to Read Investment Holdings Co., a high-tech conglomerate founded in 1988 which has annual revenues of 10 billion yuan. Business analysts and foreign Internet operators regard the licenses as intended to clamp down on information deemed harmful to the PRC government.
- In the summer of 2005, the PRC purchased over 200 routers from an American company, Cisco SystemsCisco SystemsCisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
that will allow the PRC government a more advanced technological censoring ability.
- On October 18, 2005, the PRC government restarted its policy of blocking access to WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
.
- On February 14, 2006, a group of former senior Communist party officials in China criticized the Internet censorship, stating that strict censorship may "sow the seeds of disaster" for China's political transition. On the next day, a government spokesman responded that its rules are "fully in line" with the rest of the world and that "no one had been arrested just for writing online content."
- In February 2006, GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
made a significant concession to the Great Firewall of China, in exchange for equipment installation on Chinese soil, by blocking websites which the Chinese Government deemed illegal. TIMETime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine reported that Google protests that it is in a tough situation but says it ultimately has to obey local laws.
- On March 8, 2006, two popular Chinese blogs shut themselves down to observe the International Women's DayInternational Women's DayInternational Women's Day , originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and...
and to protest their opinion that reporting on their blogs by Western media disproportionally focused on censorship. Reporters Without BordersReporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
, BBC, Reuters and Voice of America were misled by the ambiguous shutdown notice and reported without validation.
- In May 2006, Chinese Internet users encountered difficulties when connecting to HotmailHotmailWindows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL". It was one of the first...
, a popular email service provided by MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. Although Microsoft stated that the reason was a technical issue, many media reported their speculation and linked the event to Internet censorship.
- Still in May 2006, users have been reporting problems accessing POP mailboxes in many big mail providers (although POP-over-SSL works fine). In the last week of May, Google and many of its services became unreachable. It is as yet unconfirmed whether these are instances of blocking, or something else.
- In July 2006, researchers at Cambridge University claim to have defeated the firewall by ignoring the TCPTransmission Control ProtocolThe Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...
reset packets.
- On August 7, 2006, some Wikipedians in China found they cannot access Wikipedia via some proxyProxy serverIn computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
tools. Wikimedia proxy serviceProxy serverIn computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
s in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and in KoreaKoreaKorea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
have been masked by the Great Firewall. And the blocking has been enforced to URLUniform Resource LocatorIn computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
-level because if users in China link to the URL addresses of Wikipedia (all languages), Wikimedia FoundationWikimedia FoundationWikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
, Wikimania 2006 and Chinese Wikimedia Conference 2006 websites, users will get the "connection has been reset" error. Some Wikipedians in China believe this might be related with a two-page news story entitled "Wikipedia-maniac.", which appeared in the August 6 issue of the Beijing News (新京報).
- As of (at least) September 27, 2006, Blogspot blogs (which had been blocked previously) can be accessed within China.
- As of (at least) October 10, 2006, English Mediawiki sites can be accessed even without a proxy in China, though Chinese sites were reported to be blocked. The secure server, on the other hand, cannot, for whatever reason, be accessed. Some China Telecom users report access to the larger part of Wikipedia, including pages regarding Taiwan, but not other more politically sensitive pages. This article is accessible as of October 26, 2006 from Beijing. The Chinese government has currently decided to permit access to the English Wikipedia although some areas are not accessible in the PRC.
- According to Reporters without BordersReporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
, the Chinese language version of Wikipedia was unblocked around November 13, 2006.
- According to the Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, both Chinese and English versions of Wikipedia were again inaccessible on November 17, 2006. They report: "It wasn't immediately clear if Wikipedia was inaccessible due to technical glitches or because government censors had blocked the site." For more information, see Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland ChinaBlocking of Wikipedia in mainland ChinaOn several occasions, the government and Internet service providers of the People's Republic of China have blocked access to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia due to strict censorship laws enacted by the PRC. The blocks function in a similar way to a content filter...
.
- On January 24, 2007, Chinese state media reported that Hu JintaoHu JintaoHu Jintao is the current Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China. He has held the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2002, President of the People's Republic of China since 2003, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2004, succeeding Jiang...
had vowed to "purify" the Internet. Hu apparently made no specific mention of censorship, saying China needed to "strengthen administration and development of our country's Internet culture."
- On or around March 5, 2007, access to the LiveJournalLiveJournalLiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
blogging service from within China became blocked.
- On or around March 13, 2007, access to the XangaXangaXanga is a website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. It is operated by Xanga.com, Inc., based in New York City.-Origins:...
blogging service from within China became blocked.
- On or around March 20, 2007, access to the BloggerBlogger (service)Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...
and Blogspot services from within China became blocked.
- On or around March 28, 2007, the BloggerBlogger (service)Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...
and Blogspot services became accessible from within China
- On 15 June 2007, the English version of Wikipedia could be displayed again. But the Chinese language version remains blocked.
- On 15 June 2007, Blogspot was blocked in China, but as of 7 August Blogspot was reopened.