Great Firewall

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The Great Firewall (GFW; simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically.[1] Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic.[2] The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall.[3] The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g. Google Search,[4] Facebook,[5] Twitter,[6] Wikipedia,[7][8] and others) and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.[9][10]

Besides censorship, the Great Firewall has also influenced the development of China's internal internet economy by giving preference to domestic companies[11] and reducing the effectiveness of products from foreign internet companies.[12] The techniques deployed by the Chinese government to maintain control of the Great Firewall can include modifying search results for terms, such as they did following Ai Weiwei’s arrest, and petitioning global conglomerates to remove content, as happened when they petitioned Apple to remove the Quartz business news publication’s app from its Chinese App Store after reporting on the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.[13][14]

The Great Firewall was formerly operated by the SIIO, as part of the Golden Shield Project. Since 2013, the firewall is technically operated by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is the entity in charge of translating the Chinese Communist Party's ideology and policy into technical specifications.[15]

As mentioned in the "one country, two systems" principle, China's special administrative regions (SARs) such as Hong Kong and Macau are not affected by the firewall, as SARs have their own governmental and legal systems and therefore enjoy a higher degree of autonomy. Nevertheless, the U.S. State Department has reported that the central government authorities have closely monitored Internet use in these regions,[16] and Hong Kong's National Security Law has been used to block websites documenting anti-government protests.[17]

The term Great Firewall of China is a combination of the word firewall with the Great Wall of China. The phrase "Great Firewall of China" was first used in print by Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé in 1997.[18][19]

  1. ^ Clayton, Richard; Murdoch, Steven J.; Watson, Robert N. M. "Ignoring the great firewall of china". International Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies.
  2. ^ Mozur, Paul (13 September 2015). "Baidu and CloudFlare Boost Users Over China's Great Firewall". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 January 2019. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
  3. ^ Clayton, Richard; Murdoch, Steven J.; Watson, Robert N. M. (2006). "Ignoring the Great Firewall of China". In Danezis, George; Golle, Philippe (eds.). Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4258. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 20–35. doi:10.1007/11957454_2. hdl:1811/72793. ISBN 978-3-540-68793-1.
  4. ^ "google.com is blocked in China | GreatFire Analyzer". en.greatfire.org. Archived from the original on 5 August 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  5. ^ "How China's social media users created a new language to beat censorship on COVID-19". Amnesty International. 6 March 2020. Archived from the original on 3 April 2020. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  6. ^ "China Blocks Access To Twitter, Facebook After Riots". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 19 September 2010. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  7. ^ "Wikipedia founder defends decision to encrypt the site in China". The Verge. 4 September 2015. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
  8. ^ Skipper, Ben (7 December 2015). "China's government has blocked Wikipedia in its entirety again". International Business Times UK. Archived from the original on 3 May 2018. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  9. ^ Mozur, Paul; Goel, Vindu (5 October 2014). "To Reach China, LinkedIn Plays by Local Rules". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  10. ^ Branigan, Tania (28 June 2012). "New York Times launches website in Chinese language". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 September 2017. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  11. ^ Denyer, Simon (23 May 2016). "China's scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 6 December 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  12. ^ Rauhala, Emily (19 July 2016). "America wants to believe China can't innovate. Tech tells a different story". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 3 September 2017. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  13. ^ Miller, Chance (9 October 2019). "Apple removes 'Quartz' news app from Chinese App Store". 9to5Mac. Archived from the original on 10 October 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  14. ^ Statt, Nick (9 October 2019). "Apple removes Quartz news app from the Chinese App Store over Hong Kong coverage". The Verge. Archived from the original on 10 October 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  15. ^ "How China's Internet Police Control Speech on the Internet". Radio Free Asia. Archived from the original on 20 June 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  16. ^ "China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau) - Hong Kong". U.S. Department of State. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  17. ^ "Hong Kong police use national security law for first time to block access to website recording anti-government protests, officers' details". South China Morning Post. 9 January 2021. Archived from the original on 28 April 2021. Retrieved 13 January 2021.
  18. ^ Lanfranco, Edward (9 September 2005). "The China Yahoo! welcome: You've got Jail!". UPI. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
  19. ^ Barme, Geremie R.; Ye, Sang (6 January 1997). "The Great Firewall of China". Wired. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2015.