The Role Of Internet Censorship In China

Censorship in China has gained much attention recently because of the conflict between Google and the Chinese government’s self-censorship policies. In fact, censorship has been practiced since ancient China and the intensity only increases by the years. Nowadays, the most notable measure of censorship is being done on the Internet. More and more restrictions have been put into actions by the Chinese government, which make the life of Chinese Internet users, the Chinese netizens, very inconvenient. With the intensity of censorship increasing and the censoring technology improving, Internet censorship has mainly negative effects on Chinese society.

This issue is very concerning for all of China because the government will not allow any opposition to itself. The government is not moderated and therefore has indefinite power. There is nothing to stand in the way of the government doing whatever they want. There are 420,000,000 Internet users in China. That is more than the entire population of the United States. Also, recently there have been some rally cries on the Internet in China that are similar to those of the Middle East/Egypt. China is becoming even stricter on the Internet usage policies because they do not want what happened in Egypt to spread to China. The government has also said that if any reporters come to the supposed rally sites they will either be deported or arrested and sent to jail.

The Worstall article discusses the strategy to end censorship of the internet in two ways. The first is to switch the Chinese search engine and then redirect users to a mirrored version (Worstall, 2015). Google’s settings are precise and competitive with numerous search engines such as Ask.com, Bing, Yahoo, to name a few. To bring down the China firewalls, Google has the capability to do so without interference from Chinese authorities, however, this is a big gamble for Google. Services such as Gmail have been difficult to access in the past, nevertheless, Google is used globally and “blocking the company entirely would have immediate and disastrous economic consequences” (Smith, 2013).

eventually taken down due to copyrights and legality it trespassed in, but even after its demise, many new sites that allowed torrenting and other p2p file sharing began to spring up all over the internet. This led to the development of many of the sites that are still around today, such as the recently deceased Pirate Bay, Bittorrent, and many others. With the development of all of these newfound websites, it set the way for internet downloading as never seen before. People had before been restricted to VHS and CD burners, but never before something of this magnitude. With the massive increase in pirating done over the internet, companies and individuals soon became aware of the possibilities that could happen if their music or product became available to pirate.

Now, many Chinese citizens are attempting to access these applications and searches without censorship by “connect[ing] to virtual private networks that provide them with communications channels to servers outside the Chinese mainland” (Bradsher 4). Though, many citizens have found loopholes in order to post their messages to these websites. For example, on Weibo (the Chinese version of twitter), if a user were to post using a specific keyword, the post would automatically be deleted, if not manually by a superior on the site if it slipped through the system. However, because the use of “abbreviations, neologisms, homophones, and homographs” by users, many political satirists, revolutionists, or regular citizens find themselves sliding through the cracks thus escaping the censoring governments reach (Wang and Mark 5). In addition, because the government also changes from time to time, a man named Yu Jia, a government critic stated that “Today's China is very different from Chairman Mao's China. I think then, it used to be like an iron slab, and there was only really one idea. It was completely impermeable. But now, it's more like a fishnet, and there are holes” (Jia, Han and Fu 4). This further proves the argument that legislation in regard to behavior online is too varied in

In the United States freedom of speech is a commonly promoted. We promote the beliefs of freedom of speech to the future youth starting with anything is possible. Then reinforcing with, everyone has a right to their own opinion. Now thinking from a different perspective with ISPs, Google, Yahoo, and Baidu are here to promote the same feeling in different ways over the web. United States uses Google and Yahoo as a tool to connect millions of people in the world and allow users to have freedom of speech over the web, but now a conflict is created. The companies such as Google and Yahoo are built with a western culture thinking process. Now when Google or Yahoo tries to apply the same in countries such as China it creates a problem. The problem

Corporations that move into China have long recognized that internet censorship is a fact of life. In 2006,

Chinese government sets out to control the population, hence they will only allow couples to have only one child. In 1970, the country ran a campaign under the slogan “Late, Long and Few,” for birth control which was successful, and it cuts the population growth in half between 1970 and 1976. As the 1970’s was ending, the nation was still looking at food shortages and starvation killed 30 million people by 1962. In 1979 the stricter policy was implemented, and it stated couples could only have one child. In 1980 the Central Committee issued an open letter which was the official start of the law. To carry out the laws, the government fines couples for having another child without a permit. They have also made more incentives for the expectant

In, 2001, the Internet censorship laws went to the ultimate extreme. If state secrets are exported from China, the government can impose harsh penalties such as imprisonment and confiscation all belongings, and in extreme cases, the death penalty. In 2002, China banned those under the age of 18 from using Internet cafes. Internet cafe users are banned from viewing websites pose threats to “state security” i.e. websites with violence, sexuality, or heretic messages.

Surprisingly so, Chinese websites aren’t the only ones that are censoring their consumers access. American sites such as Google had allowed the censorship of anything that dealt with democracy to not be accessed in exchange for equipment instillation in Chinese soil (Grossman, Beech 2006). While it benefited Google through expanding their company it impeded free speech by not allowing people to access sites that were deemed inappropriate by the government. Agreements like Googles only assists the Chinese government in continuing to impose censorship and regulations among their citizens creating anxiety and concern amongst their users.This however has not stopped people from using the internet in China. Currently, Emily Rauhala states that while China has tamed

My research project explored the extent of internet censorship and its necessity to China as a form of societal protection. It discussed the advantages, disadvantages and impacts of censorship on Chinese society. As I researched the topic, I determined that censoring parts of the internet was more than just about protecting the young Chinese children from online predators and distressing content. My initial intention was to highlight the wrongfulness of widespread censorship however, as I researched, I was able to understand that censoring parts of the internet improved the Chinese economy, prevented cybercrimes from occurring while concurrently offering online safety. I discovered this by analysing several different websites, YouTube videos and conducting two interviews with people with expertise in the Chinese internet. My outcome, presented in the form of a feature article, explained that censoring parts of the internet benefits society more than it harms.

The internet boom that began in the mid-1990s was popular because of the enormous possibility of endless free flowing information. It was built upon the engineering principle of “end-to-end neutrality, an engineering rule of thumb calling for smarts at edge of the network rather than in the middle”1 said Jonathan Zittrain, an associate professor at Harvard. However, web filtering by governments such as China has put an end to the idea of complete freedom on the Internet. For those who are familiar with the authoritarian one-party political system in China, one would hardly be surprised by the Chinese government’s move to censor the internet.

Many Americans take for granted the freedom that living in the United States allows us. As we go through our days, we whine about our bosses, the governor’s latest political agenda, or read commentary about how the war in Iraq is morally wrong. Whether we are sending e-mail, posting on message boards, or reading the news online, we are guaranteed the same freedom of self expression that we enjoy offline. In other countries, the mere act of accessing websites that criticize the government is an offense that can land you in prison. Within this paper, we will explore Internet Censorship as a global issue as well as an ethical issue.

Internet censorship refers to constraints placed on people’s freedoms to freely access Internet services. Such restrictions are often imposed by governmental entities with the aim of controlling access to information and its dissemination. Herein, the paper explores Internet censorship in China and its implications on Google’s future in the Chinese market.

As of 2017 China Syria and Ethiopia were the highest in internet censorship (“Freedom on the net 2017”, 2017). Countries like Venezuela, the Philippines, and Turkey joined 30 other countries who were found to be spreading the government message and shape opinions (“Freedom on the net 2017”, 2017). Recently some governments in countries like Belarus have blocked mobile connectivity to prevent live streaming videos during political protest (“Freedom on the net 2017”, 2017). Internet websites have been taken down by distributed denial of service attacks,