China’s Internet Censorship

Paper-C2-Individual-Research-Paper

China’s Internet Censorship

China’s internet censorship is not new as it has been in existence since the year 1998. At this time the regulations were not defined as to what was allowed and not allowed to be viewed on the internet. Since then China spent a lot of time, money and man power blocking the free flow of communications and information to its citizens via the World Wide Web. September 2002 gave  birth to the Golden shield projects also known as the great firewall of China. This was a firewall that was built to directly censor and block certain websites and key search words from China citizens. For years the concern for China’s citizens has grown, some state that China’s government is unethical for censoring the internet and the country is robbing the people of their Universal human rights.

Dictionary.com defines unethical as “Lacking moral principles: unwilling to adhere to proper rules of conduct CITATION une14 l 1033 (unethicial , 2014)” On December 10, 1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of rules that could be looked upon as a set of Universal rules of conduct. These rules are called The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was composed by a 9 person United Nations Committee. They had drafters from all parts of the world including a drafter from China named Dr. Peng-Chun Chang. Clearly in article number 19 from The Universal Declaration of Human Right states “ Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers (The universal Declaration of Human rights, 2014)” If The Universal Declaration of Human Right is used as proper rules of conduct then by china censoring the internet is clearly unethical by definition. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference. China is taking away the right to have freedom of opinion and expression. They are also interfering with their citizen’s freedom of expression by blocking or filtering the world’s largest information outlet from their citizens.

China’s reasoning for censoring the internet from their citizens comes from a saying that a politician by the name of Deng Xiaoping stated “If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in (Fighting China’s Golden Shield: Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents [The Age], 2011)” This statement means that even if you open the doors for good opportunity that there still will be some bad that comes in with the good opportunity. But other sources say that the reason Chinese government started censoring the flow of information to and from the internet was to appease the Communist Party of China which feared the China Democracy Party would breed a powerful new network that the party elites might not be able to control. Some say that the censorship of the internet helps the country oppress its citizens because if they see how jobs and money flows in the western countries they might riot and not give outsourcing factories cheap labor.

The technology that truly changed the internet for all China’s citizens is the Golden shield projects also known as the great firewall of China. It was stated that China has the most sophisticated content-filtering Internet regime in the world. Some methods that the Golden shield projects uses are to block sites are IP blocking, DNS filtering, URL filtering, Packet filtering and connection resets. There is a long list of censored content that ranges from world news websites to pornographic websites. To test out sites that are able to be reached http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/.

With the thought of the Chinese government censoring the internet from its citizens, the citizens still keep a positive outlook on things. How can they miss what they don’t know is there but many citizens have acquired the knowledge to find their way around the great firewall of china. They use VPN networks that cost them about $100. This tricks the firewall from knowing that the IP address is coming from China so many of the China internet surfers use that as a work-around.

To summarize things censorship of China’s internet started because the Communist Party of China was the superpower and they were scared that by letting the people of China see how the world is really ran that they would riot and the government would have a hard time controlling the citizens. That is when they built the Great firewall of China which includes the devices that China uses to filter what goes in or what can be viewed via the internet. The common internet users in China don’t really mind that they don’t get to see the internet in its full form because they never really had the chance to see what they are really missing. But my personal feeling is that yes it is unethical for the Chinese government to intervene with the flow of information via the internet. All humans should have the right to express their opinion.

Works Cited

BIBLIOGRAPHY (n.d.).

Fighting China’s Golden Shield: Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents [The Age]. (2011, Aug. 17). Retrieved from Wandering China: fighting-chinas-golden-shield-cisco-sued-over-jailing-and-torture-of-dissidents-the-age

The universal Declaration of Human rights. (2014, 02 20). Retrieved from UN.ORG: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

unethicial . (2014, 02 20). Retrieved from Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/unethical

UMUC LIB CITED

BEAM, C. (2013). BEHIND CHINA’S CYBER CURTAIN. New Republic, 244(20), 5-8.

Guo, S., & Feng, G. (2012). Understanding Support for Internet Censorship in China: An Elaboration of the Theory of Reasoned Action. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 17(1), 33-52. Doi: 10.1007/s11366-011-9177-8