#chinafirewall

Well, I made it, you made it. THE FINAL POST!!

So, if you ever find yourself in China, this website along with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even Google aren’t able to be accessed in china, due to the Great Firewall created by their government. They had the intention to prevent their citizens from learning unwanted foreign information as well as politically sensitive reporting, that may in any way could damage the traditional values of the country. And right now, the firewall is the biggest digital boundary in the world.

“771 million’ (Statista 2017) of the 1.379 billion people in China, so over half, have access to the internet besides certain websites that are already banned. Showing to the world that Chinese people are still one of the most active users.

This just straight up blows my mind.

Despite having no Western social media platforms, Chinese internet have their own home-grown platforms (Crampton 2011). Because they have such a different purpose they haven’t taken off in other countries and stayed within China as they have not prevented any local social media topics from being shared on other platforms outside of the firewall.

Censorship?? What even is it?? It’s the “suppression or prohibition of speech and writing that is deemed subversive of the common good” (Anastaplo 2018). Censorship enables users to have other social media platforms, but can be highly monitored and tracked by the government, and help to prevent certain information from leaking to the public.

The Chinese Government reinforced their internet Firewall in late 2012. And since then all of their platforms no matter the topic have been heavily monitored and surveillance, although this does tend to raise some concerns about their freedom of speech and opinion amongst the Chinese community. But even with this restrictions, no one is able to pull the Chinese away from their social media, really no one can be pulled away from their social media platforms.

It’s not that I really really want to visit China, but I always planned on seeing as much as I could, and after learning about their restrictions it some what scares me. Like how would I keep in contact with my friends, my family, or even just maintaining my Snapchat streaks? But I now get that there is more out there than just Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, they have their own world for all their social media platforms.

References:

Anti, M 2011, 'Behind the great firewall of China', TedTalks viewed 25 May 2018  <http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china.html>

Crampton, T 2011 'Social media in China: The same, but different' China Business Review, Vol 38, Issue 1, pp 28-31 viewed http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/

Statista 2018, Number of internet users in China from December 2006 to December 2017 (in millions), Statista, viewed on 25 May 2018, < https://www.statista.com/statistics/265140/number-of-internet-users-in-china/>

Can you imagine yourself to function without Facebook, Instagram or Youtube? Yes! It seems pretty extreme depressing! How would we connect with our family, friends? How would keep our relationships alive, follow the news?? LIFE would end.

Chinese Internet user population extended to 650 million which is “nearly twice the population of the entire U.S.” (Spencer, 2015) Their censorship laws prohibited all those users from participating in the social networks.

Michael Anti in his TED talk claims that China, maybe has a lot of Internet restrictions, but in the same time a lot of alternatives as well. He states that “hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national public sphere in the country's history, and shifting the balance of power in unexpected ways.” (2012)

Chinese, use mainly their phones to connect with others. According to Chiu, Lin & Silverman 2012, their main alternatives are Sina Weibo (Twitter), Renren and Kaixin (Facebook), Qzone (Myspace) Baidu (Google), QQ Mail (Gmail) and YouKu  (Youtube). Well, in my opinion, all these Chinese alternatives might be a good solution but it connects the community not Chinese with the other countries. How can they follow the speed of the changing world? Impossible! 

It is a sort of Chinese bubble.

What so they do to go around it?

Obviously, Chinese citizens and tourists visiting China are looking for a way to connect with the social media. The best solution to bypass the Firewall would be a VPN and proxy connections since the servers to which we connect are abroad.

How Chinese users access Facebook?

To prove dissatisfaction on the Chinese people toward this issue I will bring up the case study of the train collision in Wenzhou on July, 23rd 2011. 

This accident leads to 40 deaths & injuries. (Branigan, 2011) This accident got a lot of attention because of the ignorance of the Chinese Government which ignored and didn’t want to take the responsibility in addressing the issue, which in return end up in the Sina Weibo and was widely shared. Most of the tweets were full of anger towards Ministry of Railway and the Government to the public about what happened.

Image source: (China Daily Mail, 2013)

Contrary to popular belief, China is not missing out on social media revolution! Yes, they may not have access to sites such as Facebook , Twitter and Wikipedia and are regulated when using Youtube; They are on the forefront of the social media revolution in terms of online communication. China have their own apps which are not government related and allow them to talk freely amongst themselves and use code words when talking about politics.  Apps such as WeChat, Weibo, QQ, Mobile Baidu, TaoBao and Tencent Video are all used as social media alternatives to the western Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. 

Sina Weibo, a platform created by Sina.com in 2009. Over the years it has developed more than 500 million registers accounts and 50 million active accounts ( AFP,2014) and has seen to be a platform used to challenge state authority in china, critics argue that the technology has so far failed to deliver structural reform and ongoing engagement (Wilfred,2015). This platform similar to Twitter, with the ability to use hash tags to connect through a key word making it easier for users to find relevant tweets associated with that hashtag. There is also the option to attach images, videos and URLs. Unlike Twitter, 140 Character limit, Chinese Characters can convey nuances and a great deal of information (Sullivan,2013). This could be a reason to why Weibo has become a catalyst for public discussion and information sharing over the years. As China is a communist country, the government still has the ability to use Weibo to effectively develop more advanced protocols of online control. As a result, ‘ the Chinese people are individually free, but collectively in chains’ on the internet (King et al.,2013:399)

Although online communication is monitored, this does not stop the people of China from actively using the internet. It is found by (Chiu et al., 2012), 57,00 internet users in China has found that those living in tier 1, tier 2 and 3 cities are registered on media sites. It is also found that Social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in china that for those anywhere else in the world (Chiu et al., 2012). This is due to the cultural difference as the Chinese consumer values peer recommendations rather than institutional information as they lack trust informal institutions (Chiu et al., 2012).

Therefore, there is no lack of social media engagement in China, rather an emerging and ever growing sphere in the digital community. There although it is highly restricted and monitored by the government, they can still access western social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter through VPN. Although it is time consuming and dangerous, it is predominately used by tourists and westerns that want to connect with their family and friends overseas.

Here is a brief overview of the Fire Wall of China- which describes the censorship well. However a more detailed version can be found  further below of the TED TALK surrounding the issue:

References:

AFP 2014, ‘Sina Weibo, “China’s Twitter”’, files for IPO, Hindustan Times, 15 March, www.hindustantimes.com/technology/socialmedia-updates/sina-weibo-china-s-twitter-files-for- ipo-in-us/article1-1195375.aspx.

China Daily Mail, 2013. Cracks appear in the Great FireWall of China. [Online] Available at: https://chinadailymail.com/2013/09/25/cracks-appear-in-the-great-firewall-of-china/ [Accessed 15 May 2017].

Chiu, C, Lin, D and Silverman, A 2012, 'China's social-media boom', McKinsey and Company, 1 May 2013

King, G, Pan, J and Roberts, M.E 2013. ‘How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression’, American Political Science Review vol. 107, no.2, pp. 1-18.