Internet Filtering in China

Internet Restrictions in China


Some of my friends in China were having some trouble connecting with my blog for no apparent reason. So I started to dig around on the topic of Internet Filtering in China.

Results are a bit shocking! Some sites are specifically filtered out.

Among the specific blocked pages are the following categories of content:

Dissident/democracy sites
Blocked sites includes sites about democracy and human rights generally and sites specific to China. Of the top 100 sites returned by Google in response to a search for "democracy china," 40 were found to be blocked, while 37 "dissident china" sites were blocked, 32 were blocked for "freedom china," and 30 for "justice china." Specific blocked sites included Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Hong Kong Voice of Democracy, the Direct Democracy Center, and dozens of Falun Gong and Falun Dafa sites.

Health
Blocked sites included sites about health generally and about health in China specifically. Of the top 100 Google results for "hunger china," 24 were blocked; for "famine china" 23; for "AIDS china" 21; for "sex china" 19; for "disease china" 14. Specific blocked sites included the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the Internet Mental Health reference, and the Health in China research project. We found blocking of a total of 139 sites listed in Yahoo's Health directory categories and subcategories.

Education
Blocked sites included a number of well-known institutions of higher education, including the primary web servers operated by Caltech, Columbia, MIT, and the University of Virginia. Blocked non-university sites included the Learning Channel, the Islamic Virtual School, the Music Academy of Zheng, and the web sites of dozens of public and private primary and secondary schools. We further found evidence of blocking of 696 sites listed in Yahoo's Education directory categories and subcategories.

News
The BBC News was consistently unreachable, while CNN, Time Magazine, PBS, the Miami Herald, and the Philadelphia Inquirer were also often unavailable. Of Google's top 100 results for news, 42 were blocked. We further found evidence of blocking of 923 sites listed in Yahoo's News and Media directory categories and subcategories. Nonetheless, some news sites that were previously blocked became accessible during the course of our testing; for example, Reuters was blocked through April 29, but was subsequently accessible, while the Washington Post was blocked through May 6 and was subsequently accessible. This reduction in blocking of entire news sites may reflect that certain new filtering technologies (discussed in greater detail in the appendix) allow blocking only of the particular sections and articles that are particularly controversial in China. As a result, our results should not be taken to suggest that every Washington Post article is now accessible in China.

Government sites
Blocked sites included a variety of sites operated by governments in Asia and beyond. As discussed below, government sites of Taiwan and Tibet were targeted specifically. Also blocked was the entirety of uscourts.gov, including the many federal district and appellate courts in the United States, as well as the United Kingdom's Court Service and Israel's Judicial Authority. The communication sites of various governments were blocked, including the United States' Voice of America, as well as travel sites from Australia, Israel, Korea, Switzerland, and Wales. Government military department sites were also blocked, including the US Department of Defense, though others remained reachable (the CIA). A variety of additional government sites were blocked, without manifest pattern, both in the United States and beyond; examples include the site of Seattle's King County, the main Australian Federal Government index site, the Philippines Bureau of Customs, the British Insolvency Service, the Office of the Governor of Makkah in Saudi Arabia, and the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. Blocked sites included 516 sites in Yahoo's categories and subcategories pertaining to governments.

Taiwanese and Tibetan sites generally
Blocked sites included business sites (like the A&D Company of Taiwan), non-commercial sites (the Taiwan Health Clinic and a total of 709 .edu.tw sites, as well as the Voice of Tibet), and government sites (the Office of the President of Taiwan and the Taiwanese Parliamentary Library among 936 other Taiwanese government sites, and the Official Website of the Tibetan Government in Exile). More than 60% of Google's top 100 "Tibet" sites were found to be blocked, and more than 47% of the top "Taiwan" sites were blocked. Taiwanese content was also blocked disproportionately, relative to its representation in our testing sample; fully 3,284 .TW sites (13.4% of .TW sites tested) were blocked, while our overall block rate was approximately 9.3%. (Of course, comparisons of block rates must be performed with care given the subjective formation of the list of sites tested. For lack of a domain name specifically associated with Tibetan sites, it is more difficult to perform such a comparison on the block rate of Tibetan content.)

Entertainment
Blocked sites included the movie Deep Impact, the Canadian Music Centre, the Taiwanese site of MTV (mtv.com.tw) and multiple sites providing off-color jokes. We also found blocking of a total of 451 sites in Yahoo's categories and subcategories pertaining to Entertainment. Business.
Blocked sites included Novartis, Malaysian Airlines, Oil Industry News, [...]

Religion
Blocked sites included the Asian American Baptist Church, the Atheist Network, the Catholic Civil Rights League, Feng Shui at Geomancy.net, the Canberra Islamic Centre, the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg, and the Denver Zen Center. We found blocking of a total of 1,763 sites in Yahoo's categories and subcategories pertaining to religion.

Now that's a very scary list!

Foreign Companies Help Restrict Access
In its quest to control the internet China has sought help from overseas. Some large, US-based computer software companies are believed to have sold Beijing the sophisticated software needed to run its filtering system. Companies like Google and Yahoo! have also been accused of co-operating in China's internet censorship. Google, for example, has modified its Chinese language search engine so that it does not show results for sites the Chinese government deems "harmful".

BBC News has more

Blogger Beware!
Bloggers must register with authorities. Earlier this year, China required anyone starting a Web site or a blog to register with authorities. Hundreds of Internet cafes — the main entry for Chinese who can’t afford a computer or Internet access — have closed as part of an ongoing effort to curb potential political decent.

MSNBC has more