Internet in the People's Republic of China

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The Internet in the People's Republic of China ( Chinese  因特网 , Pinyin yīntèwǎng ) has its beginnings in the experiments of the Chinese Ministry of Railways with computer networks in 1980.

The first international connection from China to the Internet took place in September 1987 via a gateway at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. In 1994 the Chinese authorities gave permission for a full-fledged TCP / IP Internet connection. From then on began the establishment of an independent Chinese backbone , the formation of Chinese Internet service providers , organizations and companies that are entrusted with Internet matters in the People's Republic of China.

The Chinese Internet retains its originality not only through the technical structure and organization set up by the Chinese government, but also through the local network culture . The Internet in the People's Republic of China is repeatedly discussed in the Western press, primarily because of the relationship between medium and society.

history

China has been conducting research in the field of computer technology since the 1950s. The research and use of Chinese computer networks first began by the Ministry of Railways in 1980. It established wide area networks (at that time still Long Haul Network ). The nodes in Beijing , Shanghai and Jinan consisted of PDP-11 systems, the network architecture was DIGITAL Network Architecture (DNA).

The idea of ​​a network connection from Germany to China was raised in 1983 by the German association WASCO (“Scientific users of Siemens computers”) at its first symposium in Beijing.

The first Internet connection was on 20 September 1987 an e-mail from a 13-member team, Wang Yunfeng ( Chinese  王云峰 ), Werner Zorn and Christoph Meinel produced by the Institute of Computer Application ( Institute for Computer Applications , ICA ) of the then Technical University of Peking , today “University of Science and Technology Peking” ( 北京 科技 大学 ) was sent to the computer science department (IRA) of the University of Karlsruhe . At that time, Prof. Werner Zorn played a key role in receiving the first German e-mail in Karlsruhe in 1984.

The Chinese email contained the text:

"Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner of the world"

"We can reach all corners of the world via the Great Wall"

Due to incorrect information, Qian Tianbai ( 钱 天 白 ) from CANET ( 中国 学术 网  - “Chinese Academic Network”) is seen by many as the father of the Chinese Internet.

The first international connection from China to the Internet via Germany was via a gateway . It was not until 1994 that the Chinese authorities gave permission for a full-fledged TCP / IP Internet connection.

In 1993 China started the "Golden Projects" ( 金字 工程 , jīnzì gōngchéng ) as part of the development of the Internet connection in China , including, for example, the projects:

  • Golden Bridge ( 金桥 , jīnqiáo ), which was supposed to connect information technology with the economy and to promote the coordination of the market economy,
  • Golden card ( 金卡 , jīnkǎ ), for the introduction of electronic cash , and
  • Golden shield ( 金盾 , jīndùn ), which should ensure security regulations on the Internet.

In 1996, China issued the first "Internet Control Regulations".

In 1998, a state ministry, the Ministry of Information Industry ( 信息产业部 , Xìnxī Chǎnyèbù ) , was established specifically for matters relating to the Internet in the People's Republic of China . It works with the network operators who have international connections and is committed to blocking websites that contain "trash", as the minister himself commented.

Also in 1998 there were attempts to set up a Chinese intranet , such as the China C-Net from the Sichuan Internet Development Corporation, or the CWW, also known as the “China Public Multimedia Network”, which was developed by China Telecom . The reasons given were, on the one hand, market economy factors and, on the other hand, convenience, as the latter should be based exclusively on material in Chinese and thus the information on the web should be easier for locals to understand. However, the attempts were not made.

structure

The international connection of the Chinese backbone network is in the cities of Beijing , Shanghai and Guangzhou . The Hong Kong Internet Exchange Point (HKIX) recorded a data traffic of 36 Gbit / s at peak times (October 2006).

The backbone is made up of seven networks that connect to the Internet:

  • CHINAnet, ( 中国 公用 计算机 互联网 , Zhōngguó gōngyòng jìsuànjī hùliánwǎng ), with a data traffic of 122.587 Gbit / s (June 2006)
  • China169, data traffic of 60.888 Gbps (June 2006)
  • CSTnet, ( 中国 科学 技术 网 , Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù wǎng ), data traffic of 17.465 Gbit / s (June 2006)
  • CERnet, ( 中国 教育 和 科研 计算机 网 , Zhōngguó jiàoyù hé kēyán jìsuànjī wǎng ), data traffic of 4.796 Gbit / s (June 2006)
  • CMnet, data traffic of 4.785 Gbit / s (June 2006)
  • UNInet, ( 中国 联通 计算机 互联网 , Zhōngguó liántōng jìsuànjī hùliánwǎng ), data traffic of 3.652 Gbit / s (June 2006)
  • CIETnet, data traffic of 2 Gbit / s (June 2006)

Two more are under construction. According to CNNIC statistics from January 2007, the total data transfer rate was 256.696 Gbit / s.

Some of the networks were initially under the direct control of the State Council and were then handed over to backbone network operators such as China Telecom ( 中国 电信 , Zhōngguó diànxìn ) and China Unicom ( 中国 联通 , Zhōngguó liántōng ), some of them are still under state control Control.

The establishment of CHINAnet began in 1995. At that time, it was operated by China Telecom. The network nodes of this backbone are located in the self-governing cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing) and in each provincial capital. The access standards differ depending on the network node.

The CSTnet is a network that China's scientific institutes are responsible for establishing and managing. It was the first to be connected to the Internet in China: since 1994, it has expanded from the Beijing Educational Research Network ( 北京 中关村 教育 科研 示范 网 , Běijīng zhōngguāncūn jiàoyù kēyán shìfàn wǎng ) to research institutes from over a hundred Chinese scientific institutes across the country.

The CERnet (Chinese Education and Research Network) has also been set up since 1994, with the aim of linking all research institutes and universities in China, i.e. strengthening cooperation and exchanges between research institutes and researching information between the individual institutes improve. The network structure consists of backbones, local networks and campus networks. The center of the CERnet is positioned in Tsinghua University .

The UNInet was established on July 19, 1994 and uses Asynchronous Transfer Mode . Mainly the ISP China Unicom (competitor of China Telecom) peers on this network. In 1999, UNInet also released an IP telephone network that has been released for operation in twelve major cities in China.

Network operators who peer on the PRC backbone are:

  • CNC, China Netcom ( 中国 网通 , Zhōngguó wǎngtōng )
  • Chinasat, ( 中国 卫星 集团 互联网 , Zhōngguó wèixīng jítuán hùliánwǎng )
  • CIET ( 中国国际经济 贸易 互联网 , Zhōngguó guójì jīngjì màoyì hùliánwǎng )
  • China Mobile ( 中国 移动 互联网 , Zhōngguó yídòng hùliánwǎng )
  • China Unicom ( 中国 联通 互联网 , Zhōngguó liántōng hùliánwǎng )
  • China Great Wall ( 中国 长城 互联网 , Zhōngguó chángchéng hùliánwǎng )
  • China Telecom ( 中国 公用 计算机 互联网 , Zhōngguó gōngyòng jìsuànjī hùliánwǎng )

u. a.

The network operator CNC is under the direct control of the State Council and has strong support from the Ministry of Information Industry. It is made up of the four jointly investing shareholders, the Chinese Academy of Sciences , the Department of Radio, Film and Television, the Ministry of Railways and the government of the city of Shanghai.

Another network project was the CHINAGBN, a network project for the information revolution of the national economy. The company Jitong Communications ( 吉通 通信 公司 , Jitong tongxin gongsi ) was responsible for the project "Golden Bridge" (one of the golden projects that were set up in China in 1993, and to connect IT technology with the economy ).

Since June 3, 2000, CNNIC has had ICANN's official permission to register Chinese domain names . Since March 17, 2003, registrants can also register directly under .cn. The .cn domains in June 2006 are around 1.2 million.

Net culture in China

China had 123 million Internet users in June 2006, with the Internet user being a citizen who is online for at least one hour a week. The users made up about 10% of the total population of China. 72.2% of users go online from home, 35.1% at work, 29.5% in an internet café. At the end of 2007 there were 210 million Internet users in China, which means that, measured in terms of the absolute number of Internet users, China has caught up with the USA and will soon overtake it. In the summer of 2009, there were 338 million Internet users in China (all users over the age of six who have been online at least once in the past six months) - that is 27% of the population. By comparison , there were 312 million internet users in the EU (64% of the total population). The largest group of users is made up of 10 to 29 year olds and here the students with 32%. In addition, 747 million mobile phones are registered, 155 million of which are used for surfing the World Wide Web.

Internet cafes

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Internet cafe in Lijiang

Internet cafes ( 网吧 , wǎngba ) opened in large numbers in China in the second half of the 1990s. When a large Wangba went up in flames in Beijing in the summer of 2002, killing 25 young visitors, many Wangbas were shut down by the government. The closure of internet cafes in China was then almost the only topic in the western media about the internet in China for a while, and was naturally associated with news censorship and control without the possibility of many Wangbas being involved Could have traded underground bars that were closed due to a lack of security controls, tax evasion and illegal activities (access to pornographic Internet offers versus the Youth Protection Act ).

Ten state-owned companies have now been commissioned to set up Wangbas. You should enforce uniform national standards for the equipment of Internet cafés. This includes video surveillance of every terminal , the installation of software to record all entries and to prevent access to pornographic, violence-glorifying or "subversive" sites. Compliance with these regulations is checked by raids . At the end of December 2012, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed a law that obliges all Internet service providers to check their customers' IDs.

Control provisions

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In February 1996, the Chinese government issued the first "Internet Control Regulations". All media institutions that wanted to go online needed a permit and had to do so via a central access provider in Beijing. This mainly affected the electronic versions of the print media such as the Renmin Ribao (people.com.cn).

The government decree did not affect commercial online news providers like sina.com.cn, which was only launched in September 1998. However, it can be observed that the editors-in-chief and media owners are subject to self-censorship for reasons of conformity and conclude a kind of "self-discipline pact" with the Chinese government, as for example the American company Yahoo! .

The discussions on the Internet are under constant observation and many Internet providers have a moderator, who is called big mama in Chinese, based on Orwell's concept of the big brother and with regard to the determining parental role in social norms , and who sifts out messages in forums and chats that don't line up with the party line.

The work of Western content providers and hardware manufacturers in the service of the Internet for the Chinese government is repeatedly hotly debated in the West: After it became known, for example, that Cisco was supplying the Chinese government with hardware for censoring the Internet, the company got involved Criticism.

Several large western search engine operators (including e.g. Google and MSN ) are also increasingly exposed to criticism, regardless of moral obligations to help China with Internet censorship in order to secure and / or expand their market position in China. For example, they filter the results of their search engines so that censorship-relevant hits are not listed.

Many sites on the Chinese Internet that the government regards as critical of the regime are blocked from access in China. The term " Great Firewall of China " was coined for this in the western media . The idea behind this is that China has surrounded itself with a " Great Wall " that is used to deter foreign cultural influences and subversive thinking. It alludes to the monumental structure built by the first emperor of China who wanted to defend the country against the "foreign barbarians".

The Wikipedia has been destination of IP blocks, such as on 3 June 2004, one day before the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre . The ban was temporarily removed after the Chinese administrators of Wikipedia informed the Chinese government that Wikipedia is not a political or anti-Chinese website. From October 19, 2005, Wikipedia was again blocked for a period in China. In October 2006, The New York Times reported that the English version of the Wikipedia was accessible again in China, but the Chinese language version was still blocked. On November 10, 2006, Lih reported that the Chinese Wikipedia was now fully accessible again.

In September 2005, the Chinese government issued new regulations on Internet censorship . According to the official Xinhua News Agency, only "healthy and civilized news and information that serves to improve the quality of the nation" are allowed. The "dissemination of news and information that is contrary to state security and the public interest " remains explicitly prohibited .

From July 2009, computers in China will only be sold together with the Green Dam Youth Escort filter software , which is intended to protect minors in particular from "harmful" content, especially pornography. The list of pages to be blocked is updated on the individual computers via an automatic update function over the Internet. After an article in the Epoch Times Chinese have hackers accessed the keyword list of the program and found that it contains only 2,700 keywords that are related to pornography related, but more than 6,500 including of a political nature, " June 4 ", " Tibet " and " Falun Gong ". Chinese users of the software found that they injected a DLL into Internet Explorer that prevented the use of Freegate , one of the programs often used to bypass the Golden Shield project .

A rating system is to be set up behind the Great Firewall by 2020 . Citizens are rated on a scale from A to D based on their behavior on the Internet. For example, those with an A rating are given preferential treatment for admission to schools and social benefits. Those from group C are under daily control and receive information about certain restrictions such as the reduction of social benefits. The people assigned to class D are excluded from management positions and other services are canceled.

See also

literature

  • Damm, Jens. Chinese cyberspaces: technological changes and political effects . New York [u. a.]: Routledge, 2005.
  • Fang, weigui. The Internet in China. Hanover: Heise Zeitschriften Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-936931-20-8 .
  • Fries, Manuel. China and Cyberspace. The Development of the Chinese National Information Infrastructures. Bochum: University Press, 2000.
  • Schucher, Günter (ed.). Asia and the Internet . Hamburg: IFA, 2002 (communications from the Institute for Asian Studies; 351).
  • Schweinsberg, Nina. Brand management in the Chinese Internet . Hamburg: Diplomica Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-8366-0125-2
  • Woesler, Martin. Ethics of the information society: privacy and data protection, sustainability, human, social and environmental compatibility, conflicts of interests and values, copyright and human rights . Berlin [u. a.]: Europ. Univ.-Verl., 2005.
  • Woesler, Martin and Junhua Zhang (Eds.). China's digital dream: The impact of the internet on Chinese society , European University Press , 2nd edition 2004, ISBN 978-3-86515-190-2 , 'Sinica' series 12
  • Woesler, Martin. The Internet and Human Rights in China , European University Press 2nd edition 2005, 58 pp., ISBN 978-3-89966-121-7 , 'Scripta Sinica' series 12
  • Woesler, Martin. The Internet in China as an exponent of globalization and promoter of a critical public , European University Press 2nd edition 2005, 58 pp., ISBN 978-3-89966-117-0 , series 'Scripta Sinica' 11

Web links

Commons : Internet in China  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Zorn : How China was connected to the international computer networks . In: H.-W. Meuer (Hrsg.): PIK - practice of information processing communication . 11th year 1988, issue 1, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, pp. 22-29, ISSN  0930-5157 ( facsimile ( memento of April 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )).
  2. ↑ Werner Zorn: PIK letter to the editor Zorn. (PDF) February 12, 2006, accessed July 20, 2006 .
  3. ↑ Manuel Fries: China and Cyberspace. The Development of the Chinese National Information Infrastructure . Bochum: Bochumer Universitätsverlag, 2000. P. 53
  4. ↑ a b c d China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC): 18th Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China. (No longer available online.) June 2006, archived from the original on May 16, 2008 ; Retrieved October 3, 2006 .
  5. ^ Regina Edelbauer: China's Digital Revolution - Political Communication in the Virtual World. KAS-Auslandsinformationen 6/2010, pp. 90–91.
  6. ↑ sue: Over 20 dead in a fire in an Internet café in Beijing Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 16, 2002, accessed August 26, 2017
  7. ↑ lis: China tightened Internet controls . Spiegel Online , December 28, 2012; Retrieved August 26, 2017
  8. ↑ Andrew Lih: China Squeezes PC Makers , Archived Page at Archive.is, October 16, 2006, accessed August 26, 2017.
  9. ↑ ap: China: Mehr Zensur im Internet , taz.de, September 26, 2005, accessed August 26, 2017.
  10. ↑ China Squeezes PC Makers . The Wall Street Journal , July 8, 2009.
  11. ↑ Chinese Regime's 'Anti-Pornography' Software Targets Falun Gong (en) . In: Epoch Times , June 13, 2009. Retrieved June 27, 2009. 
  12. ↑ Axel Dorloff: Monitoring totally made in China , tagesschau.de, May 26, 2017, accessed August 26, 2017.