Internet Censorship in China

This combination of active monitoring and technological control makes China one of the most restrictive countries in the world.

The roots of internet censorship in China can be traced back to the country’s Cultural Revolution, a period of intense crackdown on anti-Maoist ideologies that took place between 1966 and 1976. Though subsequent leadership introduced financial reforms to move the country toward a market-based economy, the use of state apparatuses to monitor and tamp down dissent has remained.

Today, there are more than 688 million active internet users in China, though their experiences on a day-to-day basis are far different from those of us in other countries. In addition to having access to certain major websites restricted, many Chinese internet users actively participate in a form of self-censorship, with the understanding that their behavior online is being monitored and scrutinized.

Officially, China’s internet censorship policy is to block sites containing “superstitious, pornographic, violence-related, gambling and other harmful information,” according to the state news agency Xinhua. However, in practice, most internet censorship in China is done for the purposes of maintaining political stability. Search engines frequently restrict access to articles about broad topics such as democracy, freedom of speech and police brutality, as well as politically sensitive issues such as Taiwanese independence and the Falun Gong movement.

Aside from filtering out specific search engine content, over 3,000 websites are blocked entirely in mainland China. These include:

The control of public opinion online has been called “China’s biggest engineering project.” The country’s internet censorship policies have greatly restricted free speech and independent journalism. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have called China “the biggest offender when it comes to internet censorship,” while Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 176^th out of 180 on its World Press Freedom index.

Internet censorship in China is big business, too. By restricting international competition, companies such as Alibaba and Baidu have become some of the most successful in the world. The country has also made money selling surveillance technology to other repressive states.

A VPN can potentially be used to work around firewalls and other censorship measures in China. However, the websites of many VPN providers — including Le VPN — are blocked in the country. For this reason, if you’re planning a trip to China in the future, it’s important to subscribe and download our software ahead of time.