Is your Web Site Censured in China?

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There’s still a lot of people out there who don’t realize China isn’t a democracy, perhaps confused by its booming capitalist economy that’s expected to replace Japan this year as the world’s second biggest in terms of GDP. China doesn’t have elections, has no freedom of speech and, of course, censures the Internet.

Photo courtesy of Alek von Felkerzam

Recently it backed away from requiring that all computers have its Green Dam software installed, a content control system. Perhaps the embarrassing public revelation that Green Dam contained code copied from Net Nanny, a commercial Internet filtering program, and the subsequent law suit filed by the publishers had something to do with the about face.

However, Green Dam wasn’t absolutely necessary for the Communist party to achieve its aims, it was just an additional measure to restrict what the Chinese view over the Internet, and perhaps a way to identify subversive citizens. The fact is, what you can see in China is already controlled via the Internet service providers as well as content providers who cow-tow to the party’s policy, lest they be summarily unplugged and prosecuted. Industry insiders refer to the censure system as the “Great Firewall of China“.

Go to a cybercafe in Shanghai or Beijing and try accessing YouTube or Facebook, and you’ll get “server cannot be reached”, or maybe even some Chinese web page that has nothing to do with these sites will be returned. Then try searching for “Dalai Lama” on Baidu, the country’s most popular search engine, and the results will be for web pages that condemn the exiled Tibetan leader. That’s just a tiny sample of what the Chinese government deems as inappropriate content.

Google China made headlines by announcing it would not filter search results as required, threatening to abandon China if the authorities tried to force them to comply. Very noble on Google’s part, but if you’re in China, clicking on the search result links won’t take you to the banned sites. I’m not sure if Google’s cached versions would still be accessible. Note that Hong Kong ,although administered by the Chinese government, isn’t subject to censure.

how can you find-out if a web site, perhaps your own, is on China’s restricted list? One way is to type the domain name in the form at http://www.watchmouse.com/en/ping.php which will try accessing the domain through a large number of places, including Shanghai. Here’s a few top domains I tested and what transpired through a Shanghai isp:

myspace.com – Not blocked
cia.gov - Not blocked
hrw.org (Human Rights Watch) – BLOCKED
dalailama.com – BLOCKED
wikipedia.org – Not blocked
Wikipedia page about Tiananmen Square protests: BLOCKED
falundafa.org – BLOCKED
wsj.com (Wall Street Journal) page about Uighurs’ protests: Not blocked

From these results we can conclude that while a web site itself isn’t blocked, any pages it contains which refer to subjects the Chinese government is sensitive about may be censured, although they appear to not have the means to catch all of them. If they could, there’s no doubt that they would!

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