Overview of Censorship in China

Zhang Jialong, a Chinese blogger, was fired from his job at one of China's top Internet companies because of his comments during an interview with American secretary of state, John Kerry. The company fired Mr. Jialong for supposedly "leaking business secrets and other confidential and sensitive information." One of Jialong's questions was, "Will you get together with Chinese who aspire for freedom and help tear down this great firewall that blocks the Internet?" (qtd. in Ramzy). Jialong was fired simply for asking about freedom of expression. China has imposed a Great Firewall since the late 1990's, blocking many unapproved websites in order to promote cultural and political unity.

Censorship is defined as the "control of information and ideas circulated within a society" (What is Censorship). The Chinese Government has one main monitoring body: The Central Propaganda Department. It requires that all citizens to abide by the censoring rules. The Central Propaganda releases self-promoting information and creates guidelines that restrict politically sensitive topics. China implemented a program, the Golden Shield, colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall, that censors the Internet; it censors advertisements, videos, and articles coming into China from the outside world and is also responsible for censoring articles and videos posted on the Internet from inside of China. If Chinese reporters fail to follow the Golden Shield's regulations, they can be harassed or sent to jail. In addition, YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia are heavily restricted; web users in Internet cafes must provide personal information in order to log into Wi-Fi. Google has also made modifications to compensate for China's censoring by creating separate search engine called Google.cn; Google.cn self-censors its information, meaning Google checks its own data before being published so that it meets China's censorship guidelines (Xu).

In the 1990's, China began blocking a list of foreign websites, including Voice of America, human rights organizations, and foreign newspapers. Starting in 2005, China has also paid people, part of a group known as the 50 Cent party, to post pro-government messages and steer online conversations away from sensitive topics. "Recently China's filters have since become more sophisticated and can now selectively block specific pages within foreign websites rather than making the entire site inaccessible" (James). Furthermore, Chinese authorities can also block particular terms when they are used in search queries or instant messages; users who searched for banned keywords are blocked from Google for ninety seconds before the webpage is completely inactive. For example, the word "river" was censored for a period of time because in Chinese, it is pronounced the same as the last name of China's shunned former president, Jiang Zemin, and is therefore censored. However, there are ways around censorship; a VPN, virtual private network, provides an encrypted channel to connect to an Internet server in another country, allowing the user to browse the Internet normally. However, VPNs are slow, making the loading time for every site, censored or not, longer, thus imposing an additional cost (How Does).

China censors in order to maintain a harmonious society. According to China, censorship helps stabilize their society by maintaining Communist ideals and beliefs and blocking the anti-government or democratic propaganda; thus, citizens are only aware of the news fed to them by the government. The government is then able to promote all of their successes and cover up their failures, creating a sense of perfection in the citizens' perception of China. Covering up any rebellion ensures limited dissension among the people and a sense of cultural unity, preventing anti-communist ideas from spreading (Xu). Censorship has long been an issue in China in terms of ignorance, the government's lack of multiple perspectives, and the citizens' inability to consider and respect other cultures, but if enough people speak out, there just might be a change.

Works Cited

"How Does China Censor the Internet?" The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 21 Apr. 2013.

Web. 28 May 2014.
James, Randy. "Chinese Internet Censorship." Time. Time Inc., 18 Mar. 2009. Web. 26 May 2014.
Ramzy, Austin. "Chinese Blogger Says He Was Fired After Meeting With Kerry." Sinosphere Chinese.
Xu, Beina. "Media Censorship in China." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, 12

Feb 2014. Web. 27 May 2014.