Copying China’s online blockade
Alexis Beauclair
Author Headshot
By Shira Ovide
China’s government commands the “Great Firewall,” an elaborate system of technology and people that blocks foreign websites, contorts online conversations and punishes people for straying.
I spoke with my colleague Paul Mozur, who has written for years about technology and politics in China, about what he called “firewalls great and small” by governments in Myanmar, Russia, Uganda and other countries that are to varying degrees also trying to control online activities.
Shira: Please first explain China’s system of internet control.
Paul: It’s a combination of blocking just about any foreign website you can think of and providing an information environment that reinforces what China’s government and the Chinese Communist Party say about the world.
The controls are comprehensive. A huge government bureaucracy monitors online activity, and an army of volunteers report content to be censored and help spread positive messages about government initiatives. Companies are tasked with pulling material off the internet, and engineering teams are dispatched to build artificial intelligence tools to help. Contractors provide the manpower for industrial scale censorship.
The newest phenomenon is the internet police, which detains or investigates people if they’re found to routinely do things like make fun of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, online or raise sensitive political topics.
Does the firewall work?
Yes. It comes at the cost of the government’s energy and money and the permanent anger of a segment of the population, but it’s extremely effective in shaping what many think.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
Most people don’t have time to escape the information environment they live in, so it informs their outlook on the world — especially during crises. The online manipulation during the early coronavirus outbreak was probably the biggest censorship event in history.
How do other countries’ efforts to block some websites or control the internet compare with the Great Firewall?
Iran and North Korea also have nearly complete control over the internet, and Myanmar and Cambodia are potentially trying to do something similar.
But it’s difficult for any country to permanently block major social media sites and censor what people say online — as our colleague Anton Troianovski has reported from Russia. It risks angering citizens and isolating the economy, and the government risks missing its other priorities. It’s also difficult to stay on top of people’s attempts around the internet controls.
How has Myanmar tried to control people’s online activities?
When the coup started last month, the military used brute force tactics to simply blackout the internet temporarily. In some cases, they did it at gunpoint. Now they’re slowly cutting access.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
Each morning, people wake up to find new websites they can’t access. For now, it has been fairly easy for people to get around those blocks. The worry is that new technology from China could make the blocks more complete, though we’ve seen no evidence to date of China’s involvement.
How do you explain that in Myanmar people have suffered from too little restraint of the internet and also too much? First, the military spread hatred online against the country’s Rohingya minority group, and now it’s cutting off the internet.
Where democratic institutions are weak and there are challenges over a country’s future, powerful actors will both cut off the flow of information when it suits them and deploy the internet to spread information in their interests. China does both, and so has Myanmar. Though it might seem contradictory, censorship and disinformation go hand in hand.
What’s next?
The fear is that China will make the technology and techniques of its internet manipulation system readily adaptable by other autocratic countries. Myanmar is important to watch because if the generals control the internet without decimating the economy, it may become a model for other authoritarian regimes.
The New York Times
Me: “We” have internet censorship. Certain sites are blocked, but we don’t know which ones until we try to access them. Currently I use a proxy or a VPN to get wherever I want to go, but I notice that some of the other sites I use less frequently are no longer accessible, so I think it is only a matter of time before all of my internet download sites have been removed and nothing will be available anymore.