The Great Firewall of China (Final Episode)
If we want to know about the history of the Internet in China, we have to go back to 1986. The first e-mail exchange in the United States took place in 1971. Sixteen years later, for the first time in its history, China exchanged e-mails. From a laboratory in China, Professor Qian Tianbai sent an e-mail to a German university, in which he wrote, “Through the Great Wall, we can reach every corner of the globe.” This incident was very inspiring for China, even though it was much later than America, as it was only after this historical event that China officially entered the Internet age. For the first few years, however, Internet access was limited to high-ranking officials of the Chinese Communist Party and university professors. However, the use of the Internet was not as widespread then as it is today. Internet access was used mainly for high-speed communication.
In 1995, Internet services were opened to the public for the first time in China. This was a huge benefit for the Chinese people, so about 1.5 million Chinese citizens took advantage of the Internet in just one year. The Chinese government declared 1997 the Year of the Internet. Numerous Internet cafes sprang up in almost every major city in China, which was always crowded. In the early years of the Internet revolution, the Chinese government did little to control it. In 1997, the Chinese government enacted laws to regulate the Internet in China for the first time. The 1997 law states that if a Chinese citizen publishes anything on the Internet that is harmful to China’s national security, he or she will be subject to penalties under the law.
However, two incidents in 1998 and 1999 forced the Chinese government to take more restrictive measures. In 1997, a 30-year-old Chinese software engineer handed over some 30,000 e-mails to an American-based magazine. Software engineer Lin Hike was later arrested and sentenced in accordance with the law. This is the first time in China’s history that a person has been punished for a virtual crime. The following year, in 1999, ‘Falun Gang, ‘ A spiritual organization with about ten thousand members, held a silent procession in front of the central office of the Chinese Communist Party. They use e-mail and mobile phones to organize members for this silent procession. The Falun Gang organization leaders said they had organized a silent procession to prevent them from performing religious rituals in public. The then Chinese government did not have the slightest hint of this silent procession. The government fears that the use of technology could lead to a larger movement. The importance of Internet control and surveillance is felt anew by them.
The Chinese government plans to develop software that would allow it to monitor all of China’s information on the Internet. The project to integrate these software was named ‘Golden Shield.’ The man who played a key role in the Golden Shield project was named Fang Binshing. He was later promoted to a key position in the Communist Party to contribute to the Golden Shield Project. Since 2000, he has been referred to as the “Father of the Great Firewall.” By the 2000s, the Chinese government-controlled the country’s vast Internet world through the golden shield of technologist Fang Binshing. In September of that year, the State Council of China issued Order No. 292. The order calls on all Internet service providers operating in China to ensure that any information transmitted under their networks is in line with China’s information technology law. Otherwise, legal action would be taken.
China’s Golden Shield, or The Great Firewall, has changed in several steps. If we look at the first step, it can be seen that the people of China used to enjoy a lot more freedom in using the Internet. Since the Internet has been open to the public in China since 1995, there has been little or no government policy. The then Chinese government began blocking IP addresses and domain names to remove any information against the communist ideology from the Internet. The Great Firewall, or Golden Shield, began to adopt keyword censorship in the second phase. In this way, if Chinese Internet users accessed a website that posed a threat to national security in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, the sensitive content of that website would be deactivated.
In the third phase, The Great Firewall begins the process of identifying VPNs (virtual private networks) and enacting appropriate legislation for them. In the second phase, when keyword censorship removed sensitive content, Chinese Internet users were accessing it using VPNs. Initially, it was difficult for the Chinese government to stop using VPN, but within a few years, the developers of The Great Firewall overcame the weaknesses of VPN. In the fourth stage, the developers of The Great Firewall recommend that legislation be enacted that would punish any VPN user and provider appropriately. Since 2016, the Chinese government has enacted a number of laws, and a Provision was made to punish VPN users after identifying them. The law also instructs all Chinese smartphone makers to remove VPN applications from their App Store.
There are currently numerous websites that Chinese Internet users cannot access. Not only that but the vast Internet world of China is constantly monitored. The Great Firewall also determines what Chinese Internet users will and will not see. The Chinese government thinks that if the entire Internet is opened to the public, they may one day be influenced by Western liberal ideas and take to the streets to demand democracy. Western intelligence agencies will use this opportunity to oust the Communist Party from Chinese state power. In many communist countries of the world, the US intelligence agencies have succeeded in overthrowing the communist government by taking the citizens of those countries to the streets through secret conspiracies. The Chinese government believes that the whole credit for China’s rise in the global arena goes to the Chinese Communist Party, And with democracy, that might not be possible. From a Chinese point of view, controlling the Internet is essential to the survival of the Chinese Communist Party.