Abstract: Since its inception, the Internet has been an immense nexus for data transfer and global communication. Current estimates place historical Internet usage at just under 1.4 billion unique individuals – a number not unlike the total population of the People’s Republic of China. Though the emerging superpower contender was relatively late to embrace the Internet phenomenon, a tremendous amount of web development has occurred in recent years. Despite the potential benefit of the Internet to its billion-plus denizens, the Chinese Communist Party has created one of the world’s foremost web sentry systems – the Golden Shield Project. Parisian-based Reporters Without Borders, an international non-governmental organization, has ranked China 163rd out of a total 169 countries in terms of freedom of the press. Mounting external pressures – as well as increased investments in Internet accessibility and surging cyberspace traffic, will prompt the CCP to reexamine its Internet policing regulations. Priority in this paper has been given towards the historical buildup of Internet technologies in China, diagnosis of present Internet use in China through empirical data, and realistic public policy recommendations for China’s future. Recent transgressions, such as Google’s wavering decision to remain in China despite lackluster performance and looming cyber-security threats – will also be examined in detail.

Introduction

In this paper I will analyze the contemporary internet situation in the People’s Republic of China – a nation that is quickly polarizing the globe as an eminent second superpower contender– through the lens of sociology. I hope that the use of social science methodology can overcome biases of contemporary discourse on this topic, which often is often spurred on by the unpredictable political weather and unscrupulous media coverage. Priority in this paper has been given towards the reflection on the past buildup of internet technologies, diagnosis of the present internet use through empirical data, and social policy recommendations for the future. I have tried to minimize unnecessary political commentary or expression of personal attitudes wherever appropriate. In this paper, I will address the core issue of censorship of the Internet in China, strategies that can be explored by government officials, and finally, realistic recommendations that China can adopt in the 21st century.

Issues

Although a relatively recent invention, the Internet has revolutionized the way people obtain information and communicate around the world. Its original use was for file sharing, but today, it is used for numerous rationales including email, the World Wide Web, streaming media, and collaboration. It is estimated that as many as 1.4 billion people have used the Internet, proving the ubiquitous nature of its existence (Noguchi 2008). Thus, the growth of the World Wide Web has possibly been the single greatest trend in the incorporation of a digital lifestyle for the average human. Even more recent to the use of the Internet has been China, who has seen rapid growth in their economy, and a desire to use the Internet liberally like the rest of the world. However, the Chinese government has produced one of the most extensive internet censorship networks in the world, in accordance with the values of their culture and their government officials. Reporters Without Borders, a non-governmental international organization that advocates freedom of the press, publishes a Worldwide Press Freedom Index each year. According to this prevalent index, China places 163 out of 169 for freedom of press (Grenzen 2008). As a comparative barometer, the United States is 48 on the list and Russia is 144. Since the onset of the Internet in China, the government has been policing the Internet, choosing what its citizens can and cannot see. The main reason for this policy is that the Chinese government is trying to protect the state’s interest, and feels as though the Internet could provide a potential threat to their existence. Thus, the Chinese government has invested billions of dollars to develop matrix systems to censor content and limit personal freedoms on the Internet.

The issue of censorship in China is a fairly recent one, as China was late to pick up on the use of the Internet. As Asia was quickly engulfed by the internet in the past ten years, China was forced to take action regarding censorship, and recent studies have shown that China has 94 million internet users, half of whom have broadband access (Esther 2005). The sheer size of Internet usage in China proves the robust job that the Chinese government faces when trying to regulate the Internet. Censorship in China is conducted under a variety of laws and administrative regulations developed by the government throughout the years. This is done largely through the existence of an Internet police task force that is in charge of both developing the technological software used in censoring, as well as ensuring that adherence to the rules occurs (Kahn 2006). In order to spearhead the initiation of a program directed towards censoring content on the Internet, the Ministry of Public Security created the Golden Shield Project. Started in 2003, this project had the desired goals of constructing a communication network and computer information system for government officials to improve their capabilities and efficiencies in policing the Internet. This culminated in the creation of the “Great Firewall of China,” which uses all of the complex technological hardware and software to censor content. The next few paragraphs will serve to discuss the ways in which China has been so prolific in censoring content on the Internet.

Although China has spent billions of dollars implementing technology used for censorship, including the reportedly $800 million Golden Shield Project, China has created the largest firewall in the world. One reason why this is possible is because China has rewired the fiber optic cables to only enter the country in one of three points: Beijing-Qingdado-Tianjin in the north, Shanghai on the central coast, and Guangzhou in the South where it comes from Hong Kong (Fallows 2008). By doing so, they essentially limited the number of places where they have to monitor and control content. At each of these three international gateways, China has installed tappers, which is a new technology that can mirror every packet of data going in or out – including lightly encrypted caches. Information travels along fiber-optic cables as little pulses of light, and as they travel to these international points, numerous tiny Chinese mirrors bounce reflections and separate the data, which then gets analyzed by Golden Shield computers that decide whether or not the content should be flagged. The Golden Shield computers are programmed to detect and stop information, and do so according to four different pieces of technological software. The first is the DNS (Domain Name Service) block, which in laymen terms, is the telephone directory of Internet sites. Each Web address coincides with a number sequence such as 38.1456.555, and if the number sequence matches the number sequence of a website on the forbidden list provided by the government, then the DNS will give back no address. This is how the Chinese government prevents citizens from going to specific websites, such as <www.freetibet.org>.

The second piece of technology they utilize is the connect phase. After allowing the web address to be processed, the computers can still prohibit the connection to this website, and will interrupt the transmission and prevent it from going through. This scenario applies as an early deterrent to ‘harmful’ e-mails sent by China’s internet users, especially if the e-mail server is located within national boundaries. The third barrier that the Golden Shield project possesses is the URL keyword block. Although the numerical Internet address that one is trying to reach might not be on the blacklist, the words in the URL might include forbidden terms. If this is the case, the computers are designed once again to pick up on this and the connection will be reset. An example of this may be a website that is not prohibited by the government, but contains the word ‘Falun Gong’, which in fact a search term prohibited by the government. This will be picked up by the computational mirrors and prevented from being patched or transmitted.

The final protective barrier that the Chinese government has is perhaps the most sophisticated and secretive of the four: scanning the actual contents of each page. Although the exact software coding utilized is not directly known, engineers have developed a way where the tiny sensors can actually scan the content on every page, judging page-by-page the websites accessibility. Whenever surveillance systems flag an IP address or see prohibited content within the mirrors, authorities have developed technologies that can pinpoint the origination of that search. Thus, there is a good chance that the authorities know what registered user/address is sitting at the computer and where the terminal is located. Within a short duration of time, sometimes less than half-an-hour, authorities can be at their door threatening imprisonment, or they can readily find the address of the home or café in order to mandate fines and further restrictions on Internet usage. An example of this was the story of journalist Shi Tao who had used a Yahoo email account to post pro-democracy materials online. Within a week, local authorities searched his residence, arrested him on suspicion of acting against the government, and jailed him for months. Using the new technology of page-by-page scanning, the computer systems picked up Tao’s blog and the pro-democratic comments that he wrote, and rerouted warnings to the proper officials of the crime. This example shows how serious the Chinese government is about upholding the regulations that they have in place regarding Internet usage.

The censoring of content by the Chinese government has had a great effect on the population of China. This includes not only the general population, but also the academia world as well. Majority of the general population in China does not have direct access to the Internet, so the use of Internet café’s in China is extremely popular. These internet café’s are called Net Bars, and over 50,000 of them exist throughout all of China. Net Bar’s have been particularly hard to regulate, so from October to December of 2004, Chinese authorities closed over 12,000 Net Bars and implemented more stringent laws regarding Internet usage, providing a further inconvenience for the general population. Not only is it extremely hard to get internet access in your own home, which mostly only the wealthy are fortunate enough to afford, but Net Bars now have their own guidelines that they must follow in addition to the typical Golden Shield protocols. In 2005, China implemented new rules banning children under the age of sixteen from Net Bars and required that business owners keep detailed logs for 60 days of Internet usage and the pages visited by the customers. In addition, people must sign in with specific identification cards before they are granted access to the Internet. Firstly, this vastly limits the way children are able to access the Internet. With many homes not having Internet connections, children often must rely on computers at school to access the Internet, which severely limits their capabilities to communicate and obtain relevant information. This stringent Chinese control also has large effects on academia; it is becoming increasingly hard for researchers and scholars to obtain necessary and harmless information that is crucial to their studies.

For example, Professor Chu Huongqi of Beijing Normal University commented that if a Chinese researcher, or any researcher for that matter, wanted to study the Tiananmen Square “situation,” they could not simply put that into Google China and come up with adequate results. Rather, a study at the Beckman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School found that the only results obtained when entering Tiananmen Square related to tourism and the travel industry (Zittrain & Edelman 2005). They did conclude, however, that China is by no means static, and the list of prohibited sites is updated daily and sites are blocked and then unblocked arbitrarily. However, this still suggests that researchers have trouble accessing relevant information because of technological software that China has developed which censors and prohibits specific content.

The uneven implementation of policy that the Chinese government has enacted is quite surprising. For example, none of the censorship seen throughout Mainland China is seen in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Macau. Rather, these regions have essentially free Internet, and most internet restrictions do not exist in these territories. In Taiwan, their own municipal government regulates their internet, and has done so more liberally than the Chinese government had previously. In Hong Kong, a lot of the same laws do exist, but there are virtually no consequences for violating the rules vis-a-vis blogging or using external servers to allow sites (Kahn 2006). Even pornography is de-regulated in Hong Kong and is fairly accepted by mainstream society. On the other hand, the Chinese government is much stricte censoring Tibet because of their past history with the region, and computer systems are even more limiting as to what they allow and what they don’t allow.

As the Harvard Law Study concluded, there is inconsistency within Mainland China as to what is censored and what is not censored. During the course of the empirical study at Harvard, specific news sites such as CNN and Slashdot were blocked and unblocked in the course of a week. Researchers concluded that news sites with sensitive content do not appear to take long to be blocked, but are taken off the prohibited list with similar expediency. Thus, it is not explicitly known what criteria is used to evaluate which sites are to be censored and which sites are not to be. Specifically, pornography is considered to be one of the most heinous crimes on the internet in China next to blogging about the government; yet during the course of the Harvard Study, only 13.4% of the sample of well-known sexually explicit sites seemed to be blocked from access by the government (compared to 86.2% of the same sites blocked in Saudi Arabia). Nevertheless, sites dealing with such generic concepts as democracy or massacre are almost always prohibited by the government. Thus, the Chinese internet policies are by no means static, and there is a great deal of dynamic inconsistency within the regulation of policy itself.

The increased global attention of censorship within China has resulted in the creation of a number of devious ways by which people sidestep the restrictions and are able to get the information they need or want. Although it was previously believed that only businesses (especially those based offshore) were capable of sidestepping the restrictions via private cache reserves and encrypted data packet streamlining, recent research has indicated that the general population has the capability, given enough technical knowledge and effort, to get around the censors. The first way that people get around the firewall is through a proxy server. A proxy server in essence is a way of connecting a computer inside China with another computer outside out China, allowing it to retrieve information from American or Japanese servers and transferring it to Chinese ones. This is a cheap way to get around the regulations, which makes it popular among students and hackers.

Using proxy servers does, however, make Internet usage very slow, so more businesses choose to use VPN’s, or Virtual Pirate Networks. The VPN basically creates your own private, encrypted channel to run alongside the normal Internet, and can transfer information from a server outside China to one inside China. VPN’s only cost $40 per year, but for the average Chinese worker who makes a little over a dime a day, this cost is too exorbitant and cannot be used (Fallows, 2008). Although this problem is easily correctable by the government, the bottom line is that every bank, every foreign manufacturing company, and every retailer needs VPN’s to exist, and the Chinese government could not survive without the survival of these firms. Thus, although certain individuals are now exploiting the loopholes in the system, the Chinese government currently has little choice and must allow some exceptions to its control if it wants the economy and its culture to remain intact.

Since there are currently loopholes within the censoring system, it is evident that the Chinese government needs assistance by various companies and organizations throughout China and the rest of the world. It is simply not reasonable for China to police the internet by themselves, so they have adopted policies to garner help from others. The Internet Society, which is a state-owned ISP, recently enacted laws requiring that domestic internet providers, as well as content creators, sign a pledge that they will self-filter. Though somewhat flimsily dependent on self-governance, this is the first line of defense for the government. By having the domestic Internet providers such as Baidu self-filter, they eliminate a great deal of work that they would otherwise have to do on their own. It also shifts some of the costs from the government to the corporations. This also applies to search engines in China such as Google. There was a lot of public outrage in America that Google entered the Chinese market knowing that they would be censored, calling it un-democratic and anti-American. However, Google was faced with only two live options: enter and comply with Chinese internet procedures or ignore the Chinese market altogether (Ghitis, 2006). There was no third option for Google of entering the Chinese market and refusing to comply with state-imbued policies.

Not entering the Chinese market would have extensively damaged the potential economic success for the company, and Google was not ready to sit back and allow competitors compete for valuable international market share. A series of unyielding transparency requests from the search engine Altavista back in the early 2000’s hindered its entrance to the Chinese sector. This proves the power that the Chinese government yields over foreign companies, even those that pledge to make large direct investments in technological infrastructure and software improvements. Not wanting to miss out on an exponentially expanding consumer market, most foreign firms are willing to sacrifice some or their organizational morals and typical protocols to take share in some of the burgeoning profits. Google is only one of the countless examples of foreign firms (including Cisco Systems, who allegedly helped create the mirror software that the Chinese government employs) which succumb to the pressure of the Chinese government in order to gain profit from this new emerging market.

Policy Alternatives

In line with the other powerful nations on the planet and the rest of the world as a whole – the internet is becoming an ever-increasingly difficult entity to monitor. The act of trying to contain this phenomena from conducting its course becomes a difficult, if not impossible decision altogether. China’s stringent internet policies and strict codes of conduct are becoming harder and harder to enforce, especially as the number of Chinese internet users and younger generations familiar with computer systems increases. (Kahn, 2006) After much analysis of the current situation and outlook on China’s internet system, a total of three feasible solutions were conceived to represent realistic and ‘live’ options for the ruling party.

First, China could decide to restrict internet even further than they are currently doing in order to demonstrate the concept of protecting the ‘security’ of the state and elevating it way above the rights of the individual. All inbound and outbound e-mail would be filtered and flagged for sensitive information, while intense server notification systems would alert authorities over potential ‘trouble makers’. More ‘illegal’ websites would be blocked from Chinese users, and the list of internet offenses would be updated on a constant basis. What this means is that the Chinese government would have to invest heavily in upgrading existing technological monitoring systems and establishing a larger budget portion (currently unknown) to pay the increased hike in the recruitment of additional ‘internet police’. Of course, labor in China is not very expensive, and with the esoteric design of the current system in place, China would not have to radically alter anything. It can be expected that there some protests would break out amongst the population internally, but nothing radical (i.e. Tiananmen Square) would be expected. Note that this choice is hardly discussed among academic critics or political figureheads of the Western world – many believe that China’s current system is already acceptable as it is and do not entertain the thought of it getting any worse. But for fairness’ sake, this presentable option must be included into the list of all possible choices for the CCP.

Second, the Chinese government could open up the internet by increasing users’ freedoms within Chinese-governed provinces. The mobilization towards such a move would be simple; the Chinese government could choose to literally do nothing. All existing internet security personnel would be redirected towards other jobs in the government, and the current firewalls and filtering systems would all but become obsolete by the year’s end. In this regard, the actual mechanism of the choice is a passive one – increased internet freedom generally means a lower rate of governance and an increased expectation on personal discipline, which should not be a problem for many Chinese. However, the strain on the Chinese government in making this decision is actively opening up the possibility that China’s state rule will be suspect to revolutionary change in its functional role as the authoritative government. Individuals within China might see this slack in policy as the catalyst for China to slide down that slippery slope into eventual democracy. While many external nations and organizations would like to see this progressive change within China – it is not clear how well China will take any significant alterations to its rule. The economic, social, and political impacts would be entirely impossible to accurately predict from within Chinese Communist Party rule, much less a limited Western perspective. If Russia’s transformation to democracy is any example of what a communist state must go through in order to reach true democratic ideology, then the option of reducing control on citizens becomes unappetizing.

Third, the Chinese government may decide to play it by ear and maintain the current system until it reaches a critical point at which it is forced to confront the two above options. Waiting it out would give the Chinese government more time to consider all possible risks and benefits associated with either of the above choices. In addition, there should not be much increased negative publicity on China’s current practices as long as they maintain the status quo – that is, things should not get much worse in the public spotlight of Western nations if China stays on course. This would give the CCP an unbiased and clear head to think things through, with the possibility of testing minor technical policies or regulatory techniques along the way.

Keep in mind that, for all of the three choices listed, there is very little involvement of any actual public involvement in this policy. The unique setting of the dominant Chinese government gives it ultimate reign in matters like these, which are considered quasi-issues of national security. As such, the ramifications of a potentially wrong choice are almost internally (within China, that is) nonexistent, save for a few localized incidents or minor protests. In other words, no matter what policy China chooses, all will be considered to be superficially ‘correct’ by the Chinese population because there will not be any public dissent tolerated. Thus forth, it is extremely difficult to accurately gauge the level of agreement that the majority of Chinese internet users will have with any of the policies selected above. All quantitative or qualitative data may be skewed in favor of a rather ‘nationalistic’ mindset, rather than to reflect a true, discerning common perception. (Abrams 2008)

Let us consider, without incidental bias, the effects of other highly restrictive internet systems in the world, as rated by prevailing beliefs in the modern era. Kim Jong Il’s North Korean regime has some of the world’s toughest internet regulations, but it is a ridiculously harsh state in which citizens living in Pyongyang need a permit just to leave the city. Iran’s new Ahmadinejad-led government has recently cracked down on the accessibility of particular regions to photojournalists, but how similar is Iran’s geo-political climate in comparison to China’s internet landscape? The internet security of Myanmar (formerly the Union of Burma) is one of the globe’s most stringent, but a causal comparison between Myanmar’s population and the amount of Chinese internet users reveals how such a prolific control is possible for a relatively encumbered few. A picture is beginning to manifest that, not surprisingly, China is a unique example of a large, influential global power still holding on to its preventative early communist roots. Even if internet regulatory techniques are similarly contrasted between China and other countries – the history, culture, and sheer volume of China’s people are an overwhelmingly difficult and unique population to govern. As with much of the past five thousand years in which China isolated itself in times of crises, a policy originating from within China might be the best solution once and for all. (Grenzhen 2008)

Eventually, there will be a critical ‘bottleneck’ point – the proverbial fork in the road in which China has to decide which path to follow. Until that juncture, China may maintain its current status quo by playing a balancing act between strong censorship and individual license to browse. The dilemma still exists, though, as to when China will have to choose a single road. The CCP cannot maintain this constant juggling act forever. Consideration and planning today for that future decision could have a vital effect on whether or not China successfully deals with the thriving Asian technological boom.

From an economic standpoint, China has a great deal to benefit from ‘opening’ up the internet. The sanctioning of unlimited online action would have tremendous consequences for the business and economic world. Companies from all over the world would not have to rely on a few privately monitored servers anymore; instead, numerous servers and hosts would replace the need for the slow and inefficient process of screening incoming and outgoing e-mails or invoices. (Pan 2008) In fact, the possibility of outside proxy servers and foreign IP address all accessing China’s mainframes without harassment raises the potential for increased business communication within China.

In addition, the average consumer would seek to benefit from an opening in China’ internet security with fewer restrictions communicating with the ‘outside world’. A flurry of new possibilities in academic and institutional exchanges can come about if China is willing to relax the austere principles which govern her internet policies. With the impressive statistic that over 60% of China’s internet users view media files (i.e. video, music, pictures) online on a daily basis, lessening the restrictions can be seen as releasing the floodgates of freedom to the mounting frustrations regarding the slow bandwidths and connection speeds in relation to large media files. (Zittrain & Edelman 2005)

From a personal perspective, the technological landscape in China seems to be changing at a volatile pace. As the world’s leading country in economic growth the past few years (close to 10% GDP annual increase), why would any bureau or organization seek to slow down the boom by way of clandestine technical matters? Economic incentives to ‘open’ the internet are far greater than to ‘close’ it even further.

Future Strategies

Suspension of Judgment

As much as this might seem like a ‘cop-out’ option, suspension of judgment is probably the best choice for China would be suspend their judgment of any changes needing to be made at least until the end of this calendar year (2009), if not a few years farther. This option is the closest we have to a pseudo-compromise – one that will partition both sides of the argument for China’s internet security to be further developed before a move is made. With consequences of an enormous magnitude, this difficult choice represents a model on which to potentially base other media decisions on later. The Olympics last summer served as an excellent starting point for such trial periods in which the freedoms and limits of internet use will be tested by the CCP. Cumulative user and access data from all over the country was collected, but none of it has yet to be revealed. (Pan 2008)

There is a wide range of opinions regarding the moves that China should make in terms of changing its internet policies. Why not narrow that range and focus on small steps, one at a time? In all of its 5,000 year history, China has not been known for making wide-sweeping policy changes under government rule / kingdom domain – only drastic measures have been taken to displace current administrations or dynasties. Experimentation will likely appease, in minuscule portions, both staunch conservative advocates of China’s internal security and liberal demonstrators for its freedom. At worst, this decision would prolong the agony of waiting for a definitive clause regarding internet policies, but it would also minimize the risk of deciding on a potentially devastating choice.

It is important that China makes this decision (even if the citizens are not involved with the actual process), and that it is not made for China. A single person deciding the policy within the CCP is better than a thousand individuals planning China’s program from the outside, as the CCP must maintain autonomy and a reputable sense of control if any of its policies are actually going to be implemented successfully. Only proof-positive conclusions from an internally-generated decision will be effective in the long run. Furthermore, as seen prior demonstrations and riots, the CCP does not respond particularly well to mounting external pressure. Diplomats, trade relations, private corporations, and international events may all contribute to China’s decision – but it ultimately has to be made independently. (Noguchi 2008) An honest and candid self-examination of China is the only sufficient option.

Visibility

In any case, no matter what strategy China employs, it must be made visible. What this means is that the typical citizen can be expected to know at least the basic premises of such a policy – pleas of ignorance, even if discarded before by the governing bodies, should lessen drastically in volume as every tech user becomes aware of his or her limitations in cyberspace (if any at all). The increase in visibility regarding China’s future internet policies should not be limited to inside sources. Rather, an international understanding (and even possible approval) by foreign entities would be best for everyone. (Fallows 2008) Education is a key component here. Internet users, while annually growing by the millions, are becoming younger and younger demographically. In order to raise substantial awareness about this issue, goals should be set to teach children at a young age the rules and regulations governing China’s evolving internet policies. Questions regarding certain procedures or protocols should be directed to a single source (read: information hotline/authority) that is both easy to find and access by the common user. No shrouds of visibility should haunt the ‘borderline Democratic’ blogger uncertain about the consequences of his/her actions. Contact information regarding technical problems should be routed to a few sources with as little political red tape in between as possible. After all, the approach that was taken to analyze the current situation in China believed it to be a public policy issue – something that, while maybe not entirely decided by the public, is consistently practiced and accepted by the public. Knowledge is power – if so, then China must adapt that mantra and start to educate the masses instead of merely issuing seemingly random punitive damages. (Zittrain & Edelman 2005)

Conclusions

All in all, the course of China’s internet security and preventative systems measures reflect on the format of policy decisions within China. While few governmental policy shifts can be labeled as ‘easy’ so-to-speak, choices involving China’s freedom of expression and government censorship are of particular importance, since they dictate (no pun intended) the paradigms by which the entire communist charter operates from. Then again, are the ideals of freedom in which we are so accustomed to entirely presentable to Chinese masses that have never seen the likes of unadulterated democracy? Is China’s current system ready for such a sweeping reform or liberated internet communications? More questions than answers prevail.

It is easy to jump on the bandwagon of popular Western thought and believe that China should / can / will do only one thing – but how paradoxically close-minded is this process of thinking? Trying to view China’s issues from their lenses, while socially and politically difficult, is at least cognitively beneficial towards considering all sides of the issue. There are risks and rewards in all choices, and the consequences of a policy directing over a billion people are of high priority. The question, thus forth, remains: “What would be best for China?” Conversely, we are forced to ask ourselves if what is good for China – is good for the rest of the world?

References

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Fallows, James. “The Connection Has Been Made.” The Atlantic (2008). 11 Mar. 2008. <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200803/chinese-firwall>.

Grenzen, Ohne. “Press Freedom: Changed by Day.” Reporters Without Borders 08 Mar. 2008. <http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?_article=240525>.

Kahn, Joseph. “China Has World’s Tightest Internet Censorship, Study Finds.” The New York Times. 4 Dec 2006. 04 Mar. 2000. <http://newyorktimes.com/china/204567_censorship>.

Noguchi, Yuki. “Internet Frims to Defend Policies.” The Washington Post 15 Feb. 2006. 09 May 2008. <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021>.

Pan, Esther. “China’s New Internet Restrictions.” Council on Foreign Relations (2005). 09 Mar. 2008. <http://cfr.org/publication/8913/>.

Zittrain, Jonathan, and Edelman, Benjamin. Empirical Analysis of Filtering in China. Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Harvard Law School. Boston: OpenNet Initiative, 2005.

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