Among all countries that limit access to Internet content, China has the most extensive censorship. Thanks to the Golden Shield Project (aka Great Firewall of China), China has proved itself able to deny a vast majority of its Internet users access to information that it feels could weaken its authoritarian power. Among all countries that limit access to Internet content, China has the most extensive censorship. Thanks to the Golden Shield Project (aka Great Firewall of China). The system blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through, and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet gateways. The Firefox add-on China Channel offers Internet surfers outside China the chance to the experience how frustrating browsing the Internet can be for a Chinese person living in the mainland. Created by Aram Bartholl, Even Roth, Tobias Leingruber, this open source add-on uses Jeremy Gillick’s Switch Proxy add-on to connect the user to various Internet proxies inside the country. This allows the user to surf the Web using a Chinese IP address, protected from taboo topics such as police brutality, Tiananmen protests, freedom of speech, democracy, Tibet. Try accessing Amnesty International, as well as major Western religious sites or Skype and you’ll see a page that says, “Connection has timed out”. As the creators state on the project website, their “intention with the China Channel add-on was simply to help lower the technical barrier to surfing the Chinese internet”. It is a matter of fact that Internet censorship is an increasing phenomenon. The internet, traditionally considered as a medium difficult to censor, is highly filtered and China has sharpened its know-how in the past years. While all fingers are currently pointing at China, other countries are tightening their filtering system and as Tobias Leingruber says “It’s really important to spread knowledge about the censorship that’s going on in the Internet right now”. In China and all over the world.

Valentina Culatti