#thegreatfirewallofchina

[euniceyounice7]

CCTV all around China

What’s the case with China? What’s happening in China? Are the citizens of China living peacefully or frighteningly? Let’s explore more in this week’s blog!

In China, there are 802 million active internet users, representing 57.7 percent of the population, which in comparison, the United States only has 300 million internet users approximately. Yet, the Chinese government, President Xi Jinping, has made the world wide web not so wide as there are several issues (McCarthy 2018).

The Great Firewall of China

The Great Firewall of China has created barriers that limits the flow and exchange of information, in other words, the foreign websites and news agencies such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, Reuters and BBC are barred from entering China’s internet (Maags 2019). Instead, China had their own version of Google, called Baidu, WeChat that is equivalent to Facebook and YouTube that is substituted by Youku. Furthermore, Dennis and Kahn (2019) asserted that the Chinese government restricted nine types of information, comprising post that might disrupt social order, and information that might harm the state’s dignity and interests. Additionally, Maags (2019) stated that public belief likewise influenced subtly by governmental social media accounts or “”50-cent army”, the state-employed bloggers that post positive news and comments about the government online to convince and influence public opinion. Nevertheless, there are Chinese citizens that refuse to believe and blindly follow the official propaganda. They responded using metaphors and code words to condemn the government and the lack of freedom of speech by accessing the internet via virtual private networks (VPNs) to avoid the Great Firewall (Maags 2019; Heaven 2019). 

Censorship in China

Censorship in China is another issue faced by the Chinese citizens. Kristof (2019) noted that President Xi Jinping that is anxious and insecure regarding Hong Kong protesters, religion and Winnie-the-Pooh related topic, has lead him to be frightened that real information will penetrate the Chinese echo chamber, undermining his propaganda department’s personality cult around a kind “Uncle Xi”. One example of censorship is the banning of Winnie-the-Pooh at China’s movie theatres and internet, due to commentators that suggested it looks alike with the overweight President Xi (Kristof 2019). According to Kristof (2019), President Xi wanted to censor information in China as well as the discussions and forums in the West these days.  

China’s Social Credit System

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOk27I2EBac)

Moving on, the China’s Social Credit System is a ranking system that helps monitor the behavior of its vast population by ranking all of them based on their “social credit” (Ma 2018). According to Ma (2018), the citizens’ score will decrease or increase depending on their behavior. This is a new technology that controls its population in a creepy and terrifying ways, which will be implemented in 2020 to ensure a safety living in China (Matsakis 2019). Each individual is given 1000 points and is consistently observed and rated based on their behavior via the pilot system (Jones 2019). They can earn points by doing good deeds such as helping the needy, donating money and praising the government on social media. In oppose to that, those behave badly such as criticizing the government, smoking in non-smoking zones, and stealing will lead to a decrease in the points. Rewards and privileges for the citizens with good behavior include receiving priority for children’s school admissions and higher opportunity of promotion at workplace. In contrast, the citizens with bad behavior will be punished by prohibiting to book train or flights ticket, public shaming, restriction in getting the best jobs and banning citizen’s children to study in the excellent schools (Ma 2018; Jones 2019).

Is China’s AI technology the answer to the future?

Personally, I think yes. This can be supported by O’Meara (2019) statement as AI technologies promise advances in communications, health care, transport and fundamental breakthrough that can potentially shape China’s future directions and reap the most advantages. For example, AI technology, incorporating huge patient data sets for training software to predict disease that needs research and development has created a distinctive opportunities and great potential workforce for China’s researchers (O’Meara 2019). 

Does China’s Social Credit System help the citizens to behave well and ensure a safety living?

I think it helps the citizens to behave well and ensure a safety living, at the same time, the citizens will live frighteningly as well. Implementation of China’s Social Credit System can assist in reducing crime, so citizens can live peacefully. Citizens with good score will be given privilege and rewards. In contrast, it will also permanently affect the next generation that is innocent and this is unfair for them in the future especially when they wanted to enrol in the best school but restricted to do so due to the previous generation’s bad score. Also, imagine Chinese citizens walking on a road with thousands or millions of surveillance cameras tracking them, they have no privacy and completely transparent as all the personal data is controlled by the government and there is limit in freedom of speech on politic issues.

That’s all from me, thanks for reading!

References

Dennis, MA & Kahn, R 2019, Internet: electronic publishing, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 10 April, viewed 24 November 2019, <https://www.britannica.com/technology/Internet/Electronic-publishing>.

Heaven, D 2019, ‘China’s Great Firewall and the war to control the internet’, New Scientist, 12 March, viewed 25 November 2019, <https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132210-400-chinas-great-firewall-and-the-war-to-control-the-internet/>.

Jones, K 2019, ‘The game of life: visualizing China’s social credit system’, Visual Capitalist, 18 September, viewed 26 November 2019, <https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-game-of-life-visualizing-chinas-social-credit-system/>.

Kristof, N 2019, ‘Let’s not take cues from a country that bans Winnie the Pooh’, The New York Times, <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/opinion/china-censorship.html>.

Ma, A 2018, China has started ranking citizens with a creepy ‘social credit’ system – here’s what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you, Business Insider, 29 October, viewed 26 November 2019, <https://www.businessinsider.my/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4/?r=US&IR=T>.

Maags, C 2019, The Great Firewall of China, Fair Observer, 23 September, viewed 25 November 2019, <https://www.fairobserver.com/region/asia_pacific/great-firewall-china-censorship-chinese-news-today-vpn-china-38018/>.

Matsakis, L 2019, ‘How the west got China’s social credit system wrong’, Wired, 29 July, viewed 26 November 2019, <https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system/>.

McCarthy, N 2018, ‘China now boasts more than 800 million internet users and 98% of them are mobile [infographic]’, Forbes, 23 August, viewed 24 November 2019, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/08/23/china-now-boasts-more-than-800-million-internet-users-and-98-of-them-are-mobile-infographic/#461cd01e7092>.

O’Meara, S 2019, ‘Will China lead to the world in AI by 2030?’, Nature Research, 21 August, viewed 26 November 2019, <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02360-7>.

[digitalcommunicator-blog]

#no.8 The Censorship wall

The Great Firewall of China (2010) <http://bit.ly/1qHv0nP>.

If we hopped on a plane and went overseas we would naturally expect to connect with friends and family as we always have in Australia. Due to the censorship in China, most of its citizens do not use the online platforms that dominate social media today including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

'The Great China Firewall' can be described as the barrier placed between the people of China and the sites which are accessible to them. Chinese consumers spend most of their time on 'Qzone' (Chiu et al. 2012).

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have restrictions placed on them in China. Although this may seem unfair, these restrictions on social media and foreign websites have resulted in Chinese properties thriving.

"YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are blocked in China, yet their Chinese equivalents are continuously expanding" (Crampton 2011).

Let's just imagine for a moment that instead of Australians spending most of their time on online social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, we instead spent more of our time on Australian founded platforms and social networking sites. What would our future look like?? Would Australian made sites gain same level of popularity??

The population of China is the greatest in the world, and this tells us a lot as to why Chinese online platforms generate such a high level of users. Even though these barriers may prevent most of the individuals living in China from accessing the universally dominating social media platforms, the censorship encourages people to grow their own business and branch away from the commercial trends which may boost their level of authenticity and credibility.

We are all so accustomed to the popularity of the sites which we use, and that is the very reason why we use them, we like feeling a sense of control and purpose. The more that people know of us, the more we feel that we are part of the world. Perhaps others may feel differently as they believe that the online world is not the real world. China may not allow its citizens access to particular social media platforms, yet the presence of online users remains high.

Whether or not we are censored when it comes to online platforms, most people will find a way to stay engaged and co exist in the ever growing technological era we now live in.

Chiu, C, Lin, D & Silverman, A 2012, China's social-media boom, McKinsey & Company, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/chinas_social-media_boom>.

Crampton, T 2011, 'Social media in China: The same, but different’, China Business Review, Vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 28-31, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/>.

'The Great Firewall of China' [image] 2010, Scoolbell, Wordpress, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://scoolbell.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/behind-the-great-firewall-of-china/>.

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[spillthedigitea]

The Tea tastes better in China

The Great Firewall of China. An extremely fascinating conversation. One on hand, Westerners assume that our media, especially the social media’s of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are the ultimate, monopolised industries in the world, without considering the 1.3 billion people who literally can’t access it in the first place. 

The Chinese Government’s allow their citizens to have social media accounts, however, these are on completely new and different platforms that are potentially able to compete with the likes of Facebook. China is the second-largest economy in the world, behind the USA (2015) so there is bound to have a rapid rate of technological developments and a movement towards a new media. Chinese citizens do not have access to our “normal” social media or even websites like Wikipedia. The Government has built a giant firewall against their people. But is it really affecting them? 

I was employed for a couple of months at a sports centre that was recently bought by a Chinese couple. I was informed and educated about how to use the platform “WeChat”, which is China’s “WhatsApp”. It was 100% written in Mandarin, and my bosses worked really hard to build their advertisements up on the application. That meant that I needed to learn how to navigate through, not only an application that I didn’t know existed, but one that was entirely in a language that I was unfamiliar with. 

I made the assumption “But this is Australia, and I, a social-media student, have never even heard of WeChat. This won’t work, we should try Facebook.” But much to my surprise, and a surprise it was, we had 300% more traffic in the first week of using WeChat in comparison to Facebook! Everyone had a unique code that they shared with us and 428/500 new guests that week was from WeChat. I was amazed! 

China has not disadvantaged their citizens at all with limiting their social media, in fact, these new platforms can soon become the dominant platforms. Such a new concept developing as we speak! Let us look forward to the future! 

And that’s the tea. 

Tea of the week: Oolong. S-oolong, reader. I’ve had a wonderful time creating this blog.

[jacobdigitalgown-blog]

8. The Great Firewall... which isn’t very great!

In my short life I have heard about this mysterious great firewall of China, I have heard that it blocks social media platforms such as Facebook and that it blocks inappropriate sexual content that surrounds the internet. Until now I did not understand how powerful of a force the great firewall is, considering it blocks much more than once thought. 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. Its role is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross border internet traffic. This sounds a bit technical but it’s basically a higher power who decide what can be viewed and what can’t. Along with the content I noted above, the great firewall also blocks Google search, foreign mobile apps and even Wikipedia. This seems crazy, because without Wikipedia I am not sure how any of China’s university students would be able to complete assignments…

As a westerner I find it hard to believe that China would want to block their nations people from all the online spoils that we have access to. However, it is popularly agreed upon by people who live in China or have lived in China, that the great firewall was built for this main reason. In China there is a large gap between the rich and the poor, usually in correlation, the rich are well educated while the poor may not be. It is believed that the great firewall of China is in place to censor negative comments made against China mainly surrounding education and politics that they don’t want their citizens to know. On some websites like Facebook or Twitter, there are a lot negative news about China, some of which are real, others may be fake. The government is trying to protect themselves from their own people, by keeping them in the dark about sensitive topics. In doing so they have placed a big protective bubble over their citizens, in the 21st century where free will is of upmost importance, it seems cruel and unjust to censor the public. #ClassicCommunism

Fortunately for a lot of the public in China they are still able to connect with one another and create digital communities themselves. They do this with certain apps that are approved by the government, which are basically twins to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. However, they only display content their government allows them to see. So, in contrast it’s not all doom and gloom as you may expect… (**people screaming). The apps used in China to replicate some of the big western counterparts are, Youku, Weibo and WeChat. These twin apps are somewhat popular here in Australia. WeChat being used by over 2.5 million Australians. Even with the steady popularity of WeChat, I personally believe the people of China are not getting the full experience, which is a bit of a depressing thought. Social media platforms were created for people to connect, to share and illuminate others around you, with your own interests and opinions. Unfortunately, the great firewall of China is a great pain in China’s citizens asses, and this fault should be rectified. The people should be free to make their own choices on which cat videos they can search on the internet, rant over!