As you may know, Chinese are enthusiastic about building walls. In ancient times, they built the Great Wall (GW), and nowadays, they have Great Fire Wall (GFW). Ancient Chinese hoped that the GW can protect them from the invasion of the northern nomads. But history proves that GW failed. However, to a large extent, GFW succeeds. The main difference between GW and GFW is that
GW is built to keep foreigners out, but GFW is built to keep citizens in.
One might think that the purpose of GFW is to block “western culture/ideology” coming to China. Rather, it is used to prevent citizens from learning what is happening outside the wall. Foreigners are welcome to come inside the wall as long as you follow the guidelines. For example, Apple is forced to move the data of Chinese iTunes accounts to a data center controlled by the government. (link) In order to enter Chinese market, Google tried to build a special version of Google search called “Dragonfly” that complies with the regulations.
In fact, GFW is like the border wall across the Mexican-US border and the Mexican government paid for it. The idea is to prevent citizens moving to the States. (Not sure if President Trump got the inspiration from Chinese government…) Government does know what is happening outside the wall and is eager to interact with the “western world”. One fun fact is that both the Chinese President and major government institutes have Twitter and Facebook accounts and they are posting quite actively.
Before coming to the States pursing my degree, I never left China. Fortunately (and somehow unfortunately), I experienced the period when the Internet censorship becomes more and more restrictive. Even though GFW exists since long time ago, Internet nowadays is completely different from 10 years ago in China.
What is like?
The most immediate and well-known result of GFW is that you cannot visit sites like Google, and FaceBook in mainland China. Since I’m used to opening Google to test Internet connectivity, it often takes me a while to realize there is no Internet issue when I am in China.
In addition to the limited access to the foregoing websites, another significant result is that government-controlled media can make up stories as they like. The purpose of those fake stories is mainly to foment nationalism and xenophobia. News like “American media are shocked by the achievement of XXX” are very common. This kind of news stimulates the national pride of citizens, making them love their country. And some news on the other hand go in the opposite direction: “Western countries ban XXX company for its outstanding products”. Obviously, combining xenophobia and national pride is the easiest way to foster nationalism. And the majority of people blindly believe what domestic media report, since they have no access to other information resource. After few years of information-control, citizens lose the ability and intention to verify the source of information before making their judgement.
Since the “western ideology” is blocked, most of residents in China have very conservative ideology that often makes you feel like talking to people in the 1900s. For example, many people believe that homosexual is mental sickness and must be cured. (According to the law in China, homosexual IS still classfied as a mental sickness today.) Admittedly, many Chinese nowadays are gradually aware of what is going on outside China, and have more objective and comprehensive view of the world. However, most of them are college students and middle class. The majority of Chinese still have completely no idea about the world.
Consequences
Since all the companies in China must follow the regulations, GFW makes it possible for government to censor all the information citizens have access to. Contents can be blocked as needed. One absurd incident is that the government blocked Winnie the Pooh back in 2017.
It begins with Obama’s visit to China. Someone created a meme based on a photo of Obama and President Xi walking together. They look exactly like a scene in Winnie the Pooh. The meme was widely-spread across Chinese social media, and thus Xi got a new nickname “Winnie”. Following the original meme, some more pictures are created joking about Xi.
And eventually… Winnie is banned on the Internet inside GFW.
