Great Firewall of China: Reviewing the Impacts and the Way Forward

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The young population in China do not know about the kind of internet that you and I are enjoying today. This is unless they have traveled out of the country before and now know what the rest of the world is enjoying that

they are missing out on.

For a country that plays home to a massive 1.4 billion people, China has found a way to put a block around what over 59% of its population with internet access can see and do when they get on the web. 

That has led to the common interpretation of this geo-blocking attempts as the Great Firewall of China, referencing the historic wall that the Asian country plays home to.

In this piece, we explore how this firewall is impacting Chinese lives, and what they are doing about it too.

Impacts of the Firewall 

Social Media

China wants to limit the influence of western media on its citizens. To do so would be to take out all options to access western social media too. This is why services like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp do not naturally work in China.

For the services that do work, they have also been highly regulated such that the data will pass through the government for checks from time to time. This is the situation in which WeChat – the most popular instant messaging platform in the country – has found itself in.

Western Media

These bans are not only levied against social media, though. Many websites on the internet that offer access to western media have also been taken off the servers of the country. This is aimed at controlling the information flow in the country such that citizens can only see content from websites that the government has allowed, for example, during the coronavirus outbreak. 

As you might have already guessed, this remains an ongoing process since new websites will come up from time to time. 

Those that get blocked from the Chinese servers faster than you can snap your fingers are the platforms that criticize the government of China. After all, seeing that could sensitize the people against the government to loosen the shackles that they have placed on something supposed to be open and free like the internet is.

That said, we should also mention the barrage of apps and services that the Chinese people cannot access, all because they are behind a firewall. 

How Are the People Coping?

Truth be told, it is not looking like the firewall in China is coming down anytime soon. This has led the people to start building alternatives for internal usage.

We have already mentioned the development of WeChat as a WhatsApp/ Facebook Messenger alternative above, but it does not stop there. We have also seen the launch of Weibo which serves as a Twitter alternative.

On the back of that, the firewall has spurred a lot of entrepreneurs into making local options to international services that the western world is enjoying on the internet available.

However, that cannot replace the fact that an average Chinese youngster is blinded to what is going on elsewhere in the world. Since the information they can access has been controlled by the government, they will only be able to see things one way for the rest of their lives. 

That is unless they have the chance of traveling abroad though.

Speaking of traveling, this internet situation in China is not suitable for citizens of other countries. To cope with the firewall, some of these foreign nationals might choose to get a VPN to keep enjoying the services they were used to in their primary country. 

Final Words

Having been dubbed one of the biggest enemies of the internet, China seems to not care what the rest of the world thinks about it. While every side, for and against this movement, will state their points, the battle China is fighting against its people remains a moral one.  

How else can you explain denying several millions of people access to the rest of the world?