Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

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The People's Republic of China is one of the countries that one Internet censorship ( Chinese  中国网络审查 , Pinyin Zhōngguó wǎngluò shěnchá  - "Chinese Internet censorship") perform. The mechanisms for censoring the Internet in the People's Republic of China are known inside and outside of China as the Great Firewall of China ( Chinese  防火 长城 , Pinyin fánghuǒ chángchéng ) or the “Golden Shield” project ( Chinese  金盾 工程 , Pinyin jīndùn gōngchéng ).

China is drawing criticism from numerous other countries with its internet censorship. It is criticized that China violates the freedom of expression and basic human rights of the Chinese, which are guaranteed in the Chinese constitution . The Chinese government officially pretends, unlike many other countries, to protect the population from harmful content (violence, pornography, crime):

“ In the fight against terrorism and other criminal acts, all states have the right to filter the content of certain websites in order to safeguard the security of the state and the interests of its citizens. And I think all countries are about to do just that . "

Internet control development since the 1990s

Although the first email was sent in China as early as 1987, the first Chinese website was not created until 1994. A slow start-up phase was followed in 1997 by a rapid development of the Internet in China. Between 1997 and 2009, the number of Chinese websites increased from 1,003 to 3,061,000, and the number of Internet users increased from 620,000 to 338 million.

As the number of Internet users and Chinese-language websites increased, so too did the Chinese government's concern for effective control of this medium. It should be prevented that the Internet enables access to uncensored information. According to official information, the Internet could be used to learn state secrets and to endanger state security. For this reason, Internet users had to register with the Ministry of State Security from 1996 , and from 1997 Internet operators were subject to state control. Furthermore, regulations for Internet use were issued. However, since the formulation of these regulations was imprecise and thus left a lot of room for interpretation, every internet activity could be presented as illegal.

In September 2000, a new provision on the personal responsibility of Internet operators followed: Not only was increased self-control required, but it must also be guaranteed that the content of the websites that can be accessed is legal. As a result, Internet operators have to control all uploaded websites, which creates an effective censorship system. Furthermore, personal user data and the websites accessed must be stored and handed over to the government on request.

In 2005, these regulations were tightened due to the prohibition of disseminating news on the Internet without government authorization. Two years later, then- President Hu Jintao called for more internet control resources to be made available and for internet propaganda to be increased. He also urged the Politburo that the CCP have a more dominant role in forming opinions on the Internet.

In the summer of 2017 search results for Winnie the Pooh on the microblogging service Weibo blocked. The reason given was that it was “illegal content”. This was preceded by comparisons of the children's book character with President Xi Jinping , which bloggers made with Barack Obama after a photo of Xi .

About a month later, Cambridge University blocked access to articles in its “China Quarterly” magazine, which China viewed as critical. The State Central Office for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) asked Cambridge University Press (CUP) to block Chinese access to 315 of its digital articles and book reviews. Just two or three days later, following international protests, the CUP lifted all censorship measures imposed on it by China's highest censorship authority.

Legal basis

The Chinese government is defending its claim to censor the Internet so that it can apply its own rules within its borders. Companies and people from abroad can use the Internet, but must comply with the laws of the country. The 2010 white paper called the Internet "a collection of human wisdom". At the same time, however, the government also stated that citizens are not allowed to access all of the wisdom.

Section 5 of the Computer Network and Internet Security Regulations, Protection and Administrative Rules, issued by the Council of State on December 11, 1997, lists:

No groups or individuals may use the Internet to generate, reproduce, retrieve, or transmit any of the following types of information:

  1. Inciting resistance to or violation of the constitution and laws or the application of administrative regulations;
  2. Incitement to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
  3. Inciting the division of the country and violating national unity;
  4. Inciting hatred or discrimination against nationalities or violating the unity of nationalities;
  5. Make false statements, distort the truth, spread rumors, destroy the order of society;
  6. Spread of feudal superstition, sexually suggestive material, games, violence, murder;
  7. Terrorism or incitement to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander others;
  8. damage the reputation of government organizations;
  9. further acts against the constitution, the law or administrative regulations.

The "Golden Shield" project

In 1993, as part of the development of the Internet connection in China, China started the "Golden Projects", which were supposed to bring information technology into connection with the economy and to promote the coordination of the market economy. This included the “Golden Shield” project, which the Chinese Ministry of Security was commissioned to carry out. What exactly the project includes is not officially announced outside of government circles. Allegedly it includes the establishment of services to regulate public safety. Some sources state that a firewall for the Internet was also developed as part of the establishment of this project. Outside of China, this project is already being referred to as the giant Chinese firewall that the CCP has set up. In the end, however, it is not possible to state with certainty whether this project even contained measures for internet censorship and what kind of measures they should be.

The "Great Firewall of China"

The "Great Firewall of China" is a collective name for various systems for state Internet censorship in China.

At the first World Internet Conference in November 2014 in Wuzhen, China, the Chinese government promoted worldwide Internet supervision. China must set its own rules in cyberspace, said Prime Minister Li Keqiang. China's government wants to strengthen the administration of the Internet according to its laws. Internet censorship behind the “Great Firewall” has increased steadily since party leader Xi Jinping came to power in March 2013. Even tunnel services (VPN), with which users can bypass the blockages, are massively disrupted; some of them are blocked in real time.

Since the beginning of 2017, all VPN providers have required state approval. Apple has been asked to remove VPN apps in China that do not comply with the new regulations. From February 2018, private individuals will be prohibited from accessing VPN services.

techniques

Blocking IP addresses

The Chinese government is blocking the IP address of unwanted websites ; this is the easiest and most effective way to block unwanted content. The method can be circumvented, however, by the user finding an ordinary proxy outside of China and using it to gain access. However, the Chinese network blocking department has also blacklisted frequently used proxies.

Filtering and blocking of keywords

IP packets are checked for critical words such as Falun Gong by a backbone router . The two participants who have established a TCP connection via which they communicate via HTTP now receive TCP-RST packets from computers that control this traffic. This leads to the termination of the TCP connection. The Chinese government uses this simple mechanism to block websites that are critical of the regime outside of its national territory. There are various web-based tools that can be used to determine if a particular website is blocked in China, such as: B. greatfirewallofchina.org, WebSitePulse.com, GreatFire.org , blockedinchina.net, and others.

By using VPN or HTTPS , however, this mechanism could be circumvented, as an analysis of the packets for certain words was no longer possible because of the encryption. However, these protocols can generally be blocked by discarding the corresponding IP packets. For a long time, this was considered highly unlikely, since a significant part of communication in business was also handled using VPN. In January 2015, however, media reports increased that certain VPN protocols, etc. a. IPsec , are now blocked.

The Apple group deleted most of the anti-censorship programs from its app store in China in August 2017. Apple is obliged to do so because they “violate new Chinese laws,” it said in a brief statement. Providers who have officially registered in China are still available.

Role of the western internet economy

Western Internet companies, in particular search engine operators (including Yahoo and MSN ), see themselves exposed to criticism for helping China build the “Great Firewall” in order to secure or expand their market position in China, regardless of moral obligations. For example, the above-mentioned companies filter the results of their search engines so that censorship-relevant hits are not listed, thereby actively supporting the CCP's censorship policy .

Without this commitment, the people of China would probably not have had access to the most widely used search engines abroad. Keywords such as “democracy”, “human rights” etc. are censored for Chinese users, for example, which means that only government-compliant hits are displayed.

In January 2010, Google announced that it would rethink the search engine business in China and possibly consider closing google.cn and offices in China. Since the end of March 2010, the call to the Chinese Google page has been redirected to the version from Hong Kong. This is not subject to Chinese censorship. In July of the same year, Google's search engine license for China was renewed on condition that the old Chinese version of the search engine be restored. However, there is now a clearly visible link to the version from Hong Kong on the Google homepage.

In the case of journalist Shi Tao , who was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2005 , it became known that Yahoo had provided the Chinese authorities with the information required for the arrest. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders were indignant and alarmed.

See also

literature

  • Fries, Manuel. China and Cyberspace. The Development of the Chinese National Information Infrastructure. Bochum: University Press, 2000, ISBN 3-934453-13-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ heise online: China: Many governments filter the network . May 14, 2009.
  2. ^ China Internet Network Information Center. 1997, China Internet Network Information Center
  3. ^ Lynch, Daniel C. 1999. After the Propaganda State. Stanford: Stanford University Press
  4. ↑ Volland, Nicolai. 2004. The control of the media in the People's Republic of China , May 25, 2015
  5. ↑ Kockartz, Fabian. 2007. Will China's mass media be democratized? Hamburg: Diplomica GmbH
  6. ↑ Tilman Spreckelsen: Comment: A disservice to Xi Jinping . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . July 18, 2017, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed August 20, 2017]).
  7. ↑ Johnny Erling: Research must also serve the people. In: welt.de. WELT, August 21, 2017, accessed on August 31, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Luisetta Mudie: Cambridge University Press Refuses to Comply With Second Chinese takedown request. In: rfa.org. Radio Free Asia, August 25, 2017, accessed August 31, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Tom Phillips in Beijing: Cambridge University censorship U-turn is censored by China. In: theguardian.com. theguardian, August 22, 2017, accessed August 31, 2017 .
  10. ↑ BBC: China defends internet censorship, accessed on August 10, 2017 ( memento of the original from August 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.bbc.co.uk
  11. ↑ Abbott, Jason P. The Political Economy of the Internet in Asia and the Pacific Digital Divides, Economic Competitiveness, and Security Challenges. New York: Praeger, 2004.
  12. ↑ Markus Ackeret, Beijing: The new Chinese wall. In: nzz.ch. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 22, 2014, accessed on August 25, 2017 .
  13. ↑ dpa: China continues to pull up the wall of Internet censorship. In: sueddeutsche.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 26, 2015, accessed on August 25, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Eike Kühl: Apple is not a human rights organization. In: zeit.de. Zeit Online, July 30, 2017, accessed August 25, 2017 .
  15. ↑ China updates its "Great Firewall" and intensifies internet censorship , January 23, 2015
  16. ↑ Südwest Presse: China complies with Apple , August 3, 2017
  17. ↑ ARD Tagesschau: After hacker attacks on e-mail accounts: Google puts China business to the test ( Memento from January 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ ZDF heute.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. March 23, 2010. Retrieved March 23, 2010.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heute.de  
  19. ↑ Computerbase: Google receives China license through compromise . July 10, 2010. Retrieved July 12, 2010.
  20. ↑ Journalist arrested with support from Yahoo. In: FAZ . September 8, 2005, accessed on March 13, 2016 (German).