Title: How does China censor the internet? | The Economist
Headings: How does China censor the internet?
The Economist explains
How does China censor the internet?
Content: The "Freedom on the Net 2012" report, issued by Freedom House, an American organisation that tracks global trends in political freedom, ranked China as the third most restrictive country in the world when it comes to internet access, after Iran and Cuba (though this ranking excludes those places, such as North Korea, where ordinary people are not allowed to use the internet at all). How does China censor the internet? The Chinese central government has two main ways of controlling what its citizens see on the web: the Great Firewall, as it is called by foreigners, which is a system of limiting access to foreign websites which started in the late 1990s, and the Golden Shield, a system for domestic surveillance set up in 1998 by the Ministry of Public Security. Separate government departments, along with local and provincial administrations, also have their own monitoring systems. China began by blocking a list of foreign websites, including Voice of America, human-rights organisations and some foreign newspapers. But its filters have since become more sophisticated and can now selectively block specific pages within foreign websites, rather than making the entire site inaccessible. They can also block particular terms when they are used in search queries or instant messages. Google is not blocked entirely; instead, users who search for banned keywords are blocked from Google for 90 seconds, though other websites remain available.