Once little more than a glorified porn filter, China’s so-called "Great Firewall" has evolved into the most sophisticated system of online censorship in the world. As the Chinese internet grows and online businesses thrive, speech is controlled, dissent quashed, and attempts to organise outside the official Communist Party are quickly stamped out. But the effects of the Great Firewall are not confined to China itself. James Griffiths is a reporter and producer for CNN International, currently based in Hong Kong. His new book, "The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet" (Zed Books) explores and exposes the world’s biggest system of internet censorship.
What drew you to this subject matter?
I lived in China during what we know see as the high point of Weibo as a domestic free speech platform (albeit quite controlled even then). I saw how people were able to organise and effect change on issues such as corruption and pollution. I’ve also in the years since seen how the government has cracked down in response to this brief period of openness. In researching the history of Chinese internet censorship I saw how these cycles have repeated over and over, always trending in the direction of more and more censorship and government control.
Why is internet control so important to the Chinese authorities?
The number one purpose of the Firewall is to stop the spread of solidarity and collective action. By preventing people from organising or uniting against the government, it ensures no alternative power bases can arise to threaten it.
How did China's Great Firewall evolve?
Relatively early on in the history of the Chinese Internet, the government recognised the potential threat of the technology as a sphere to organise against it. They passed regulations cracking down on all types of speech and actions online. This in turn led to an ever expanding technical apparatus to carry out the surveillance and blocking needed to stamp this content and behaviour out.
How does it function in practice?
Internet censorship in China occurs at two main levels: internationally, as traffic passes from the global web into the country, and locally, within Chinese internet service providers and tech firms. The first level is what was traditionally called the Great Firewall, which is now something of an umbrella term for all online censorship in China.
Despite this, the two types of internet censorship operate very differently. At the international level, the Great Firewall really is a firewall, software which blocks certain types of content and allows others. The Firewall inspects every piece of traffic - or packet - it handles, comparing it against a database of banned content. This can mean blocking an entire website, like Twitter, or a single page within a site, or inspecting the content for banned topics like Falun Gong or Tibet independence.
Within China, the censorship is essentially outsourced to private tech firms, which employ legions of censors (and, increasingly, AI) to scour posts and content on their platforms for potentially risqué content. This system works even better than if the government did the censorship itself. Not only do the authorities save millions of dollars by farming this work out to private companies, the companies are normally more stringent than the government censors themselves. Because there aren’t hard and fast rules for what is banned a lot of the time, many social media platforms err on the side of greater censorship, rather than risk getting fined or even having their licenses revoked.
How does China's online censorship impact marginalised groups?
Massively so. Because protecting or advancing marginalised groups, it naturally requires significant organising, and this runs up against the desire of the censors to block exactly this type of collective action. For oppressed racial groups like Uighurs, this can result in nearly everything to do with Uighur identity, language or religion being cast as separatism or otherwise dangerous, and blocked.
What impact, if any, have tech giants like Facebook, Google and Microsoft had in China?
Facebook has not, despite a prolonged effort over years, succeeded in cracking China, or finding a compromise that will enable it to get approval to operate in the country. Likely it never can, certainly not in any form we would recognise as Facebook. Both Google and Microsoft have been more successful, and have dubious histories of cooperating with the authorities. Google exited in 2010, after it became clear the compromises made to operate in China didn’t remain there, and were being used to pressure the company to censor search in other countries. It has reportedly been looking to get back in, a move that could have massively negative effects on internet freedom in other countries.
You write about how China's attacks on internet freedom have spread beyond its borders. Could you explain how?
In the past, the censors seemed mostly content to ignore the internet outside China’s borders, but this is no longer the case. Anti-censorship groups and tools have been targeted by hackers, Chinese Twitter users have been pressured to delete their accounts, and foreign companies have been strong armed into conforming to Chinese style political correctness on issues such as Taiwan and Tibet.
When it comes to looking at the internet beyond its borders, what are China's aims?
This is designed both to shore up the Firewall from any threats overseas, and is indicative generally of a more confident and assertive Beijing when it comes to foreign affairs.
Can echoes of China's approach to the internet be seen elsewhere, as western nations consider different kinds of legislation?
China is actively exporting its model of the internet, and this comes at a time when confidence in the internet is at an all time low. The danger of even democracies heading in the direction of more control is very real.
Do you foresee a situation where internet controls in China relax?
Not in the near future, if at all.
