The Great Firewall of China

by Saurabh Mishra on November 5th, 2010 1

In the recent development across the Chinese territory the new home grown Blogs getting more popularity, where global micro-blog conglomerate “Twitter” been simply failed. Due to growing soft call interaction from Twitter, & and information sharing tools, have posed the Chinese to hide en-dangers for national internal security. Even they are equally getting criticism from avid net-workers & users. With this concern, Twitter has been blocked & more encouragements towards home grown versions.

The government keeping the keen observations on Twitter like others social networking, over there development in past few years.

Since Twitter is available to only those users who have skills to penetrate the Chinese great firewalls. As authorities already gave clearance to China based micro blogging services or Weibo, which employ the armies of censors. Similarly, as Govt. own newspaper like “the People’s Daily”.

When the news of Nobel Prize declared to imprisoned activist Liu Xiaobo, it was spreading like a fire across the Chinese web circle through domestic micro-blogs. As authorities were trying hard to block access to such sites, where users started writing homonyms for Mr. Liu’s name or its abbreviation in latin characters. Chinese were themselves trapped in their own firewall, as Weibo growth was briskly. Such rapid inputs again forced authorities to block Weibo also. Against, this weibo founders too criticized government censorship polices & went on applauding its vision & aims. Weibo was one of the fastest growing portals across China, China Youth News Claimed in a statement. Over launched, it was able to generate nearly 20 million registered users. It was also reported in national wide survey that more than 45% of people under 40, were frequently used Weibo. As more than 94% said, that Weibo changed their lives.

In a report stated by Hu Yong of Peking University, He argued that this was all about promoting subtle social progress rather than lighting the fuse of a “Twivolutio”, but he reckoned the phenomenon was nonetheless opening up “new possibilities of reshaping China’s authoritarian regime.”

Under this, government also blocked accounts of many critics, prominently on both Twitter & Weibo. Till that, there was no such media to address the domestic level social issues. Later, govt too lifted the ban on Weibo mentioning its usefulness. Officials too kept monitoring filters to watch down the activities. Govt also empowering their employees on Internet & blogging usage. May be in future, they re planning to create cyber forces like Pakistan & Nigerian hackers. Few Analysts also say, all re being planned under govt. experiments, & promoting such things will gona help government only to trace dissidents in future & stop them.

News Source: The Economist ; Image: http://bit.ly/9JEEOL