China builds a Great Fire Wall

China has changed its approach to policing the Internet

January 12, 2001
Web posted at: 3:08 PM HKT (0708 GMT)

In this story: More than noise Money or mind control? Impossible aim RELATED SITES

By Kristie Lu Stout
CNN Interactive Writer

China’s efforts to control the Internet on its home soil have changed, with plans to create a closed-off Internet, dedicated browsers, and an independent domain name system.

China C-Net Strategic Alliance, the consortium set to develop China's very own information superhighway, has been dubbed by analysts the “Great Fire Wall”.

Meanwhile, a joint venture formed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Hong Kong-based telecommunications giant Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW) is developing an English-Chinese bilingual browser designed to "grab back the browser market."

The academy also operates the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a group challenging Western domain name registrars which offer Chinese language Internet domain names by setting up its own incompatible domain name service.

PCCW, after its successful takeover of Cable & Wireless Hongkong Telecom last year, aims to expand into China. Chief executive officer Richard Li is the son of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, whose conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa has strong ties to the Chinese government.

Duncan Clark, a partner of Beijing-based telecom and Internet consultancy BDA, says recent efforts to nudge the Internet towards following China's own terms is more than mere noise. "Chinese officials have clearly wanted to do this for a long time. By triangulating effectively the browser, administration, and content levels, they can get closer to more effectively controlling the Internet," he says.

CNN.com's Senior China Analyst Willy Wo Lap Lam points out that the academy has a significant connection to Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

"Jiang's son, Dr. Jiang Mianheng, is the most important of CAS's several vice-presidents; he is now working mostly on the Internet and other telecoms business," says Lam.

However, John Huang, chief executive of Chinese Domain Name Corp, maintains that recent developments towards a more Chinese Internet are motivated by meeting consumer needs, not government mandates.

"We'd been dealing with CAS since 1998, and I think the motivation here is from the beginning just commercial. Right now, there's 20 million Internet users in China. Right now most of the new users may not understand English. So they want a natural language interface," he says.

Some analysts doubt whether China can effectively build a "Great Fire Wall," believing it is impossible to block live online content due to the amount of processing involved.

They add that existing methods of filtering traffic by blocking domain names and Internet protocol addresses are already easily bypassed by using online caches such as the Google.com Web site or public proxies.

But the stakes are high enough for the Chinese government to warrant significant investment into building China's own Internet.

"With more bandwidth online, it's getting harder to control," says Clark.

"Interestingly, Real.com [a streaming media Web site] is blocked in China. With the availability of streaming media, China's control of the Internet has become much more urgent."

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