The Chinese Internet

Day 18 / 365

Facebook, in one of its documents, classified China as a SICK country. SICK stands for Syria Iran China and North Korea, the only 4 countries in the world where facebook it banned.

And Facebook is not a special case, China is pretty serious about Internet censorship. It has blocked every single web 2.0 service created. Yet the internet in China is not some sort of a deadland. With over 800 million internet users, China has the biggest population of netizens in the world. That’s larger than the entire population of Europe!

So how does the Chinese government satisfy the internet needs of its citizens while restricting access to the worldwide internet?

Block and Clone

For every website that it blocks, China creates a clone just for its own users. Some major ones are

• Sina Weibo, a Twitter clone
• Renren, a Facebook clone
• Baidu, a clone for Google

Creating these clones allows for the servers to be located in Beijing, which means the central government has complete control over all the data.

Weibo, which translates to microblogging in Chinese, has over 300 million members. Even with heavy censorship, it has become a great social force, giving a platform for people to have a collective public opinion which has never happened before in Chinese history.

The power of social media

In July 2011, two trains crashed in a city in China. The crash had a lot to do with the ineffectiveness of the rail ministry, and the authorities wanted to bury any news about the crash. Still, Chinese social media was filled with outrage. There were over 10 million criticisms posted in the next 5 days, and it resulted in the rail minister being sacked and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The other side of the coin

Did the Chinese government really listen to the voice of the people? Why didn’t it suppress or censor these opinions as it has always done?

As it turns out, there’s more to the story than that. The top authorities were already fed up with the rail minister and were looking for a reason to kick him out. Allowing the public to criticize him gave them a way to justify the punishment given to him.

The Chinese government uses freedom of speech as a political tool. In a similar fashion, it has increased its dominance over the local governments. People criticize the local governments and they can do nothing but apologize, as all the data and control is in Beijing.

The Chinese people continue to fight for their freedom of speech, but the future doesn’t look so promising.

This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here