The Great Firewall of China, Explained
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ม.ค. 2021
- The Great Firewall of China is arguably the country's most powerful security and censorship tool. I recall my first time behind the wall in Shanghai Pudong Airport. I managed to find a Wi-Fi connection at a Starbucks and tried to get to my email. I had been in a plane for the past 13 hours and wanted to check in.
Nothing. Nada. Oof. I spent the rest of the day typing journal entries in Microsoft Word.
The Firewall has been massively impactful on the Chinese economy. In blocking Western (namely, American) internet companies from the country, China has been able to create a unique internet culture of its own and control the flow of information to its people.
Because the Firewall is internet plumbing, few people know how it works and just how sophisticated it actually is. They just see their email not working. In this video, we are going to look at what the wall is, how it works, its effect on the Chinese people, and how people get around it.
Links:
- The Asianometry Newsletter: asianometry.com
- Patreon: / asianometry
An excellent introduction to the operation of the Great Firewall of China, a major component in China's broader internet censorship system called the "Golden Shield Project". Great work! I hope more people signup to your excellent early-access tier on Patreon. I think this channel is going places!
Direct link to Asianometry's Patreon: www.patreon.com/Asianometry
Wow, knowing Cisco helped implement the Great Firewall I don't feel bad they got screwed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Finally a Technical Summary, not a political lecture. Thank You.
Yeah finally
I've gotten the impression that he has no great love for any particular country/ ideology, realizing they are all BS. That makes staying objective a lot easier.
Yes, I agree, but at the end of the day, the reason for building the GF is political, I mean censoring information of a economy that pretends to be number one is absolutely absurd …
This video was excellent and well researched for a non technical person i'm impressed how you could deliver all the information about the GFW. Great work man.
12:40 - 12:55 That is a good insight. I’ve been watching your channel for years now and love your treatment of complex issues 💜
You might heard a native Shenzhen girl named Naomi Wu with her stage name SexyCyborg, a programmer, DIY maker, and TH-camr to spread her content about tech outside of China using VPN and to connect with her foreign fans.
She once interviewed by foreign media in a Shenzhen cafe about the Chinese censorship and government ability to track all of her activity and lack of personal freedom.
She simply replied : "The government already knew who I am for a long time, as long as I don't break any law I don't give a shit".
I agree, they let go on a lot, they also only block vpn providers that are trending in china at the moment ... I moved in 2010 to a new internet provider in Beijing and the first thing as a fresh user i did download a 100G database through a VPn tunnel. Some police guys did show up at my place when they saw i am a foreigner, they left ^_^
More interestingly China runs some big VPN's to get an idea what people are looking for ...
Great work man. Always looking forward for your videos.
Awesome production. Subbed.
This channel helps me expand my view! Thanks
I joined the patreon and your newsletter. Good work! ☺️
Great balanced view on the subject and very thoughtful last words! Being in Europe and in my fifties, it was easy to sign off from Facebook and never use twitter. But that's not everybody's choice and it's a good idea to reflect on one's habits and sources every once in an while!
Excellent explanation, and the final reflection made me think. Thanks a lot.
Best explanation of firewall. Good work kerp it up.
Good info. Great reporting !
Good research. Thanks
Your conclusion is excellent. Well put. unbiased.
Very good point at the end!
Nice. Good presentation. I'd add (from experience) that provinces have the ability to shut down VPN traffic at will, which always happens when a big government official visits a city.
One thing I've also heard the Firewall do is deep packet inspection so they can analyse packet behaviour, even of websites or applications the Firewall has never encountered before
Great arguments.
It's funny that for as complex the internet is, it's really just a call center.
Very interesting point at the end- that we consider the firewall as restrictive because we're used to our own little corner of the internet. Also, I'm curious how/if the firewall is dealing with the rise of HTTPS; in the good ol' days of all traffic being unencrypted, keyword blocking would have been trivial; but if HTTPS/TLS is on the rise on Chinese speaking sites as well, I could see that as an issue. Though I guess a lot of those would be based in China, and thereby have some manner of agreement with the government as far as how data is processed in the backend.
They do have content runners that look and parse new websites they did not knew before, a bit like a search engine, if they rate the website critical, they add it to the list.
I am also sure they did get their hands on a CA cert, and issue fake SSL certs for critical websites. Chrome reports these SSL mismatches back, and so far they have not been cought, in contrast to turkey, UEA and some others, but i would assume they can do this. There are to many CS certificates in the hand of small shady companies that can easly be bought ...
It was a flawed point. It suggests that the value of the internet is solely in what the average person uses it for. The principle of being so restrictive of criticism of government is inherently wrong because of the nature of human beings. The average American would t notice it either, as they are also using the web for fun or work, not to read up on controversial global politics that may reveal their country is not exactly on the right side of history right now
Thank you.
I find more and more interesting materials. Thank you!
Every country needs this for self protection
when i was in china i was able to circumvent the wall somehow buy using my verizon travelpass, not sure why if verizon has an agreement with a local telecom why they wouldn't also be behind the wall.
A lot of international "roaming" works by tunneling your device data through a VPN from foreign host provider to your service provider (Verizon). It works if GFW does not inspect and block VPN traffic via heuristic.
@@jackluo Hey Jack I was wondering if there was anything the CCP does to counter this?
simple they have an agreement with local chinese telecomm firms. i.e. the chinese govenrment.
No doubt you were paying the license fees without even knowing
I'm wondering whether China is "polite" about western VPN technology because western corporations operating in China would be unable to function without it.
There's legitimate commercial uses for it even without western comms. Factories often prefer to isolate their cloud-site communications with a VPN
@@andrewzebic6201 I would think that they don't care as the destination IP address would be located within China.
Holy shi* you blew my mind at the end there with your outro. When I get my gwuap up imma hop on ur patreon bro! Ik ur gonna be a world leader some fay
In 2007 It was enough to set an iptables rule to drop the drop packages to punch through ...
Is internet provided via satellite not able to bypass the firewall?
One way to beat the firewall is get a Taiwanese SIM card (I think a HK one works too) and use it with roaming in China. Seems roaming traffic is routed through your mobile provider so all they see is traffic from your mobile provider.
So what's the answer to circumventing it? Use obscure VPN providers or self-hosted VPN located outside of China?
I'm curious how India implemented it's block on Tiktok and how the US will implement a Tiktok block if they decide to do so.
I heard they removed it from the app stores. It’s not a block at a networking level like with the Firewall.
Yeah not blocked, just removed from us gov controlled app stores, alot of america celebs and users still active on tiktok,
You talked about restriction from China to the West, but nothing about restriction from the West to to China.
Is there anything the west blocks from China? I have no issues accessing baidu, alibaba, etc... from the States.
@@marsing69 No, China blocks the West.
@@marsing69 Western just block contents , don't block websites
well , you can not find the tank man videos part2 in western websites， because they just wanna you remember the part 1
And u never find videos about Hongkong protesters burnning old Chinese guy alive in 2019, because they don't wanna u konw they are real Nazis
@@TK-my7jg what happened in tank man part 2
@@marsing69 Tankman stopped tanks, and his friends pull him back ,than other “students”started killing polices, hang them on the bus and brige
Man, your end remark really made me thinking!
As a network engineer myself, I found this interesting. There are back doors in DNS, I wonder if the CCP have realized this.
I was shocked NxxdVPN or its competitors did not approach you to advertise their service. 😅 is it you who has taken down the ads?
if nord can operate in china that means they have an agreement with the chinese government. i would seriously question any vpn provider that can operate in china.
I think nord does not need to be physically there to get china's approval. just like any unlicensed betting website can be accessed world-wide, even with plain ip blocked
Probably busy trying to conform to five eyes censorship restraints. My friends with NORD tell me the first thing blocked was RT
Good ending.
Love Light Peace And Justice For All in the Global World
They got better at blocking vpns,etc. Going to be interesting when people smuggle in starlink dishes,etc in the future.
very very good point I never thought of
Is it feasible to scan and identify the starling signals or somehow scramble the starling frequencies? Or would possessing a starlink dish be considered a crime? They will have to do something.
That is gonna be reality
what about the app?
I'm sure they could share in Russian ECM technology. That works so well for their military.
imagine building such an impressive technical marvel for censorship. despicable
What about tor?
09:11 „Have fun on twitter“ :-D Lol, WOT? :-D No, you don't have fun on twitter. You have fun while NOT on twitter. It's the worst social net ever.
Thanks for that. What about Tor and the dark web as they call it - is Tor blocked in China?
Also, I've dealt with companies in China using a VPN - how does that work? Is it permitted if you're a foreigner buying something? Thank you kindly...
I have tried Tor, but even Nord VPN still works during my stay there, the government really doesn't care as long as you're not promoting propaganda things and breaking the laws
Tor is too slow
It would be funny western tech companies could prevent some corporate espionage by including slogans of Taiwanese independence in every confidential design document.
Well that was interesting to say the least. I've been trying as well as the woman who is in China we've been trying different methods to exchange phone numbers but now I understand why we are unable to make it happen. I've tried gematria , hidden messages in a story line but the wall picks it out ********* mf's it's upsetting.
What were you using to exchange the message? I think the method matters rather than the content. At least for personal messages
And they made the Americans pay for it.
How's "retirement life" in St. Helena working out for you, Monsieur? I heard the British are pretty disgruntled that they gotta pay for it.
what
Do not abandon your meditation..
I liked the video and while I agree that our dependence on google et al. is something to think about, I believe it is really out of place here.
China blocks not just the gateways but all kinds of news, media, journalism and any kind of direct or even implicit criticism of the Chinese government or their actions.
Maybe, in Europe, we are too dependent on a few big tech giants, but at least we can openly criticise our governments and openly share our ideas and sentiments without fear of repression.
Western has censorship, it is just not so obvious and lack of reporting. Like facebook has AI and employees to censor content. TH-cam has algorithms to downplay some criticizes. TV and radio networks are controlled by small number of large corps. Any information conflicting their interest won't be able to propagate.
Yes, you can openly criticize your governments, but when you do that, your voice won't be able to spread out. On the contrary, in China, you can criticize the government, but not openly. In the end, the results are the same for both sides.
@@sunhuatom Yes, you can openly criticize your governments, but when you do that, your voice won't be able to spread out.
Quite frankly just a load of bullshit.
There's no shortage of Outwardly Critical content that gets tons of traffic that directly criticizes policy administration, For example, Fox news is literally the most watched News Network and never stops short of criticizing every single policy decision made by Democratic Administrations on essentially every single topic, ranging from Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Taxes, Health Care, Welfare Programs, Education, etc. (almost like they are reactionary or something). What you are saying is essentially alternative-reality and so easily disprovable.
Is there some particular News Stories that get censored? Yes, For Sure. But the idea that things criticizing Central Governments is by and large is censored is just bull.
While it's true that the Chinese government censors criticism about it, the point remains that most Chinese people are not too bothered by this.
India is mulling VPN ban, data privacy and protection is not of importance, strict laws exist for drone, drone pilot license, whatsApp, twitter etc, signature tracking, in past there was BlackBerry cracking, now Pegasus issue, WHATEVER THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT, IT IS RUN BY _____ FOR ______, and common man doesn't matter., the answer given to all issue is National Security. Thankful that the govt doesn't have lot of resources to prune every single citizen, so these are reserved for the trouble creating ones. ... Hon. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,Middle East, India, and many African countries etc have conform these kind of programs and laws, and in other issues ( I have read about it) British Courts are equal to others ( don't believe the holier than thou image)
I disagree with final words were u turn the problem on people... saying how dependent we have become to look at Google, FB, Wikipedia for information... its called freedom to choose... further Chinese government goes further than this digital Firewall to restrict information... it extends to newspapers, to books, and even to public debates....
i understand that your focus seems to be to china and surrounding but is it possible to know something more about the Western NSA class firewall/monitoring systems. Im not a fan of western bias and would love to hear China/Russian version of life, history, tech etc. Western pop info can be full of s*&t
Can't agree more.
I'm using VPNs every day to get around the Western not so great wall.
Damn no porn 😱 they really are inhuman monsters. 👹👺
Do you think Starlink will be the death of the Great Firewall?
no, just dont sell the dish and the app.
Let's not forget China is putting it's own satellites into space.
(I hope this is a finger snap) Asianometry is already probably working on a video about this now 🤗
No not a video about the finger snap emoji though I wouldn't be surprised if he made a video about that too.
About the Chinese firewall in space.
it will be the death of satellietes technology that's for sure. thanks to the kessler syndrome.
I'm sure Elon gave them the keys to block that too. They Tesla he's an exemplary contributing member of Chinese society. 🤮
Based
Typing journal entries in ms word...
Im out.
Oracle and cisco should be destroyed.
Great video from Western sight. But please allow me to say something from Chinese sight.
As we all know, China did not have a Great Firewall at the beginning, and people were happy to share free resources and information with the world. But gradually the Internet began to change its taste and became a tool for Western governments to control public opinion and spread propoganda. In the Xinjiang riots in 2015, the rioters planned and implemented a series of plans in the Facebook group, which was detected by the Chinese government at that time, but Facebook refused to close any groups, and the occurrence of the Xinjiang riots made the Chinese government realize the importance of Internet sovereignty. Because if any influential company can bypass a country's laws and regulations and directly influence the country's public opinion and thoughts, it will be a terrible thing. So the Chinese government officially implemented the Great Wall of the Internet project.
As ordinary netizens, we must have scolded the government for being closed, conservative, and not free at the beginning. But the Great Firewall of the Internet has indeed protected China's domestic public opinion from being influenced by external forces as little as possible. In contrast, the color revolutions that have occurred in many parts of the world in the past 20 years have demonstrated the importance of the Great Firewall from the side-while China There has never been a similar riot that can shake the regime, which has laid a stable foundation for China's rapid development in the past 30 years. If a country's public opinion and news can be easily influenced by American companies, such as GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, and other news organizations, then the country's sovereignty of public opinion will no longer exist. If they dare to break away from the control of the United States, the color revolution will come at any time.
At the same time, in order to fill the gap of foreign software, Chinese private companies have developed numerous websites and software, and the Internet industry is developing very vigorously. With the development of mobile phone business, the development of mobile APP has not been influenced by foreign companies. Today, China's Internet business has even reversely affected the world, such as TIK TOK and TEMU.
Today's Chinese no longer scold the firewall, but instead begin to appreciate this policy, which provides employment opportunities for more people and contributes to the stability of the country.
Of course, I'm writing these few paragraphs by using a VPN.
In fact, China's current Internet public opinion is still influenced by anti-China forces. Many anti-China figures supported by American NGOs (many of whom can speak Chinese) and the Taiwan government's cyber forces have many Chinese social media accounts to lead domestic public opinion and intensify conflicts. Such as provoking antagonism between men and women, advocating sterility, supporting homosexuality, opposing national policies, etc. In the past two years, there have been many messages supporting Ukraine and opposing Russia. I'm not saying that all such issues are initiated by anti-China groups, but that they do affect many Chinese people, and the Chinese government is really slow to respond and doesn't deal with it very well.
Amusing, to be watching this on the most censored and controlled site on the western internet.
Kind of like being in China. 🙁
Without traveling.
United kingdom and germany too.
Really, the west don't want that kind of power?
They already have it, just in a more opaque way. Internationally there's the "Five Eyes," where the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States spy on each others' citizens then share the data, and domestically in the US the federal government can basically order the big local tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to do basically anything (which is why China's blocked them in the first place). It's important to keep in mind that filters like the Great Firewall are in response to the US attempting to use its default domination of the internet, down to the very core of how it functions, to influence other countries' politics and economies to be favorable to its own interests. The US openly invests a lot of resources in propaganda to influence foreigners, such as "Radio Free Asia". If Microsoft made a website and social media for Apple employees to influence them into thinking their company sucks and they should quit and leave, you can imagine what kind of response Apple might take, especially on their internally controlled networks.
Try using Google search today. Might as well be in China
mark
American shunning great firewall.
American builds the great firewall.
Profit?
cisco:heavy breathing
Shunning? American Internet censorship is nearly as complete as China. They just don't like to talk about it as much. There are hundreds of things I can only access thru VPNs or TORR right here in California.
Its now being used in iran too 🤦♂️🤦♂️
I couldnt imaging a day without TH-cam, Google. How can I learn from other great people if they ban the resource.
Nice closing sentence!
good luck with your nord vpn.
Five eyes censored. 🤭🤭🤭
I have been watching every video on your channel, amazing content, thanks! This is the first video that I don’t like. I don’t like the fact that you’re showing bias and trying to justify the restriction of access to information and free speech. Disappointing.
disagree with the last couple of points, but not bad overall.
It's easy to 'judge' it from a 'Western' perspective, but I wouldn't mind an Internet without the cesspools that are Facebook and Twitter. I don't use those platforms for starters, but the amount of complaints I hear from Twitter users and the level of misinformation that gets spread through Facebook, combined with the whole FOMO thing, makes me think that platforms like these are more harmful than people want to admit.
Obviously there are (geo)political, cultural and other reasons for this Firewall to be around, but before judging it, I think it's good to take a good hard look at its reflective sheen.
china has its own versions of google, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.. And if you think their internet is free from misinformation, you really are naive.
@@puppeli I never said they didn't, nor was I under any such misconception. The take-away bit should be that it's easy to judge when you don't know better.
To be honest, I appreciate the existence of this firewall. It did not only censor foreign contents but also domestic traffics. This is more likely to a better way to supervise medias and misleading information. I did not see in any form western medias are supervised, which probably makes some them most evil groups in the world.
@@sunhuatom Yet you are here only to spread propaganda and we are aware of that.
remember that your each freedom people lose means the others are easier to take away
No Freedom 👎
Anywhere. I'm using my VBN every day to access Western prohibited sites like RT and Sputnik. #FakeFreeSpeach
yeah, but making big money.
I guess the main benefit was China avoiding colonisation by US-American internet companies, just because they had a few years of a head start. If it also blocks all the hate, anti-science etc that the "west" is currently and actually dying from, can't say I'm really against that.
Use your brain to filter content. Decide whats stupid and whats good. Its your job, not the job of the government. Also dont use the internet if you cant deal with hate. We are adults, right?
@@WolfmanDude not agreeing with China but, supposedly right thinking adults in America voted for Trump and resist wearing masks and need vaccine mandates for covid. Smh.
Kinda like Google then.
@@WolfmanDude Peasants can't be trusted
@@WolfmanDude Well said Wolfman. 👏 We don't need the government to be our nannies and block history like the Tiannaman Square massacre.
The key reason for such firewall exist is to keep the authority in position despite the cost on the people and lowering the trust between people among the world. Part of information control for the party. Dont ignore this most important factor which account for the ideas among Chinese people nowadays, in 2021. 😑🤐
As an ordinary person no one would like this firewall but for the Chinese government it’s a must have. It’s amazing of how just a piece of software can protect national security very effectively. Without Western’s constants meddling in China’s internal affairs, this firewall wouldn’t be needed.
Sorry the west have to call you out on your genocide.
@@MrBumbo90
lol 💩, the worse genocide committer is cooking up fake genocide against other?
Welcome to the United hypocrite of America 👎🏿
@@jonhone1 Mao blows up 50 millions for the great Famine. Pieceful protests on Tienanmen Square got crushed by tanks and the government covered their shit up. Now CCP virus evade the world. I hope CCP cease from exist as the enemy of humanity.
@@mechamicro
It’s not a surprise to hear this from an evil man who seek to eliminate China. No wonder China needs this firewall badly. Whatever happened 100 years ago is caused by the Western and Japanese invasion, and China made absolutely sure it will never ever happened again.
must be nice being so naive
The reality is that most people in China support the chinese government methods. The censorship in Germany and the UK are no different from the censorship in China. All of them are authoritarian governments with limited freedom of speech. The only difference is that you agree with what one decides to censor and not the other. "This censorship is good because I do not agree with what the censored person was saying, that censorship is not good because I agree with what the censored person was saying".
well, that's right
because China's local Internet enterprises can make big money
btw, EU don't even have Internet enterprises because the market is monopolized by American Enterprises