Why We Should Be Censored In China

713 Words3 Pages

Since the mid to late 1990s, China had attempted to censor various different outlets of information, and it continues this practice into today. China has various blockaides used to censor content that enters the country via channels, such as the Internet. Furthermore, China has various services that are alternatives to the services that are blocked, however, most of these services must answer to the government, thus they are also censored. However, this type of censorship has not gone uncontested due to numerous protests. The scale of censorship in China is massive. The Chinese government employs over two million people to help censor various outlets of information, such as the Internet (Test Tube). Also, there are nine different …show more content…

The Golden Shield is a system comprised of various filters that control what people upload and download from the Internet. The Golden Shield is comprised of nine national gateways that filter all inbound traffic, these are all controlled by the Chinese government and because of this, they can disable access to the Internet at will (Hungry Beast). The Golden Shield also utilizes a feature called Keyword Filtering. Keyword Filtering aims to block any search terms that are deemed to be malicious by the government. Some examples of keywords that are blocked include; Tiananmen, Amnesty International, and any words related to religion, politics, or culture. Also, various services that individuals in other parts of the world know and use on a daily basis are blocked in China, some of these include; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google (The Economist). There is also a service located at the website, greatfirewallofchina.org, that allows individuals to check what websites are blocked in China. Moreover, China not only heavily censors the Internet, they also censor almost all other forms of media, including television. On September 1st of 1997, the Chinese government passed Regulations on Broadcasting and Television Administration (Global Issues: Censorship …show more content…

In China, since Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and many other types of services are blocked, there are services that perform similar functions that are available for the people to use (The Economist). The Chinese equivalent to Twitter is Sina Weibo, such as how the Facebook equivalent is Renren, the counterpart to YouTube is Youku Tudou, and the equivalent of Google is Baidu. These services perform virtually the same function as their counterparts, however, they have one major caveat, they are controlled by the Chinese government and they can be heavily