The Great Firewall of China
What a world without the internet? What will you do if u could not access Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or even your email? These are the things that people in China have to go through every single day. Before you plan to visit China, make sure you are prepared for the limitation of accessing the internet there. These problems caused by the Great Firewall of China (Anderson n.d.). After China got the access to the world wide web in 1994, the internet causing the country’s early netizens and the government came to a realisation that the free flow of information from the internet could cause some big political implications(Shen 2019). With that said, they created the Great Firewall OF China to solve the problem.
The Great Firewall of China is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People’s Republic of China to regulate the internet domestically, which also known as the most sophisticated Internet censorship system in the world. over the past few years, the number of websites blocked in China has increases to 10,000(Shen 2019). Some of the social networks that have been blacklisted in China are Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApps. They also blocked the access of some popular news outlet like Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The role of the Great Firewall is to block any access of foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. When President Xi Jinping became the president of China, the online restraints has grown tighter especially during the death of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo and during the Communist Party Congress in 2017(Chan 2018).
Social Media in China
According to Crampton (2017), Chinese internet users are online for an average of 2.7 hours per day, considerably more than other developing countries. China’s citizens use different social media that the rest of the world. instead of using YouTube like people in the Western country, China citizens use Youku and Tudou. Youku and Tudou are filled with longer content and professionally produces video (Crampton 2017). Besides that, China have Sina Weibo to replace Twitter. Weibo was launched in 2009 just about three yeas after Twitter. Like Twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post 140- character messages and users can follow friends and comment on things(Crampton 2017).
References:
Chan, E 2018, ‘The Great Firewall of China’, Bloomberg, Viewed 5 June 2020, < https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/great-firewall-of-china>.
Crampton, T 2017, ‘ Social Media in China: The Same, but Different’ , Goglobal, Viewed 5 May 2020,< http://www.goglobalconsultinggroup.com/blog/social-media-in-china-the-same-but-different/>.
Shen, X. M. 2019, ‘ The story of China’s Great Firewall, the world’s most sophisticated censorship system, Abacus News, Viewed 5 June 2020, <https://www.abacusnews.com/who-what/story-chinas-great-firewall-worlds-most-sophisticated-censorship-regime/article/3030478..














