The Phenomenon of Chinese SNS

In the first post, I will briefly introduce the general situation of Chinese SNS.
Social networking sites are becoming a global phenomenon. According to latest report from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by end of 2008, there are over 300 million Internet users (including 163 million broadband users) in China. While rest of the world generally engages in Facebook, Friendster and MySpace etc, Chinese have their own Social Networking Websites. In china, the current most popular Social Networking Sites are QQ.com, 51.com and Xiaonei.com.

QQ.com
QQ is The largest social networking sites with over 300 million active members that focuses on instant messaging and online gaming

51.com
51 with over 120 million register users offers its users stable services to store their personal information such as photo and blogs, and to provide facilities to let them communicate to each other Xiaonei.com

Xiaonei.com
Xiaonei is China’s largest online community website among universities with more than 40 million active users.
Here is china’s social network market share
Source from:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/05/chinese-social-networks-virtually-out-earn-facebook-an myspace-a-market-analysis/

There are several effect being tied together with social networking together. For example, the social network can act as a communication tool to connect people and it also helps to disseminate information in an effective way. For example, during the ‘Wenchuan’ Earthquake, many people claim that they have received news before their cities’ newscast. Their sources are come from 51.com, a free social networking sites.


Reference

The 22nd Survey Report: Statistical Reports on the Internet Development in China. Retrieved September17, 2009, from
http://www.cnnic.cn/en/index/0O/02/index.htm

Mjk (2009 May 9) Top 10 best social Networking Sites in China. Retrieved September 18, 2009, from
http://www.technama.com/2009/top-10-best-social-networking-sites-in-china/

GangLu (2008Jan17)Old School BBS: The Chinese Social Networking Phenomenon Retrieved September 20, 2009, from
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/bbs_china_social_networking.php


Social Network Market Share. Retrieved September 12, 2009, from
http://socialmedia.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/social-network-market-share/

Case 1
In the period of 2008 Olympics, china had blocked access to all Blogger blogs.
Here are three connectivity tests conducted by Internet users using three different nodes in China and none of them could connect to Blogspot Blogs.
Test I: Timeout while connecting to a Blogger blog from Shanghai.

Test II: No response when a blogspot site was pinged from Shanghai, China
Test III: Blogspot Website could not be accessed from Beijing, China.


Case 2
All the articles related to the “Tiananmen” Square incident(1989) were blocked.
Here are the test results conducted by Internet users.


what is "tiananmen" square incident?
In the year of 1989,about 100,000 people gathered on the "Tiananmen" square against the government's authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The movement lasted seven weeks and left many civilians dead or severely injured. The official figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.

Case 3
Chinese government blocked the access to YouTube in March ,2009.
In March of 2009, the Tibetan government-in-exile released a disturbing video regarding last year's riots in Lhasa on the platform of YouTube. In respond with Tibetan government’s provocative act, china blocked the access to this sensitive video soon.

what is 3.14 Riot ?
On March 14th, 2008,rioters began a rampage, beating people, smashing businesses, looting and burning. Their actions leaded to 13 innocent civilians dead and dozens of public security officers and scores of armed police were injured, 10 in serious condition. Rioters had set fire to over 300 sites, and burned down over 200 residential houses and shops.

List of words and web addresses banned in China

List of Words Banned in China

Here’s a quick list of blacklisted topics and sensitive keyword phrases that are blocked on the Chinese Internet. These include:

Chinese Communist Party, Ruling government
Puppet government, One-party system
Dictatorship, tyranny
Human rights in China & Freedom of expression
Gao Zhisheng (Chinese lawyer and activist)
Falun Gong (Banned cult in China founded by Li Hongzhi)

Keywords related to Military, Gambling, Brainwashing & Sex
Kidney harvesting from live people, Organ Sale
Tiananmen Square Massacre
Tibet, Taiwan Independence
Cheating in Examinations, Fake Diploma courses
How to make bombs, counterfeit money and so on.

In addition to keywords, there are some blocked web addresses.These includes:

http://www.rechn.com/read.php?tid-2819-page-e-fpage-5.html
http://www.goldenlink.ca/news/bencandy.php?fid=3&id=1481
http://www.ww123.net/baby/thread-4393578-7-67.html
http://www.ww123.net/baby/thread-4393578-7-62.html
http://www.xeggo.com/viewthread.php?tid=99
http://bbs.cnnb.com.cn/read.php?tid=582833
http://www.chinatown.org.uk/news.asp?id=7622
http://macaucityhall.phpbb3.net/ftopic3680.html
http://www.kaiyuan.de/article.php/2009802
http://post.mop.com/1325973.html
http://www.nblogee.com/Article/1000004665.html
http://bjmml.bbs.net/bbs/01/145074.html
http://city.y-cool.com/xc/Announce/Announce.asp?BoardID=434&ID=162582
http://www.b2b-chinese.com/articles/2006/20061002_2541896.html
http://dream881688.bokee.com/5717634.html
http://www.wdmbbs.co.uk/list.asp?tid=2&id=779
http://www.junzhuan.com/bbs/archiver/tid-69641.html
http://www.topyl.com/articles/2006/20061002_2541896.htmlhttp://www.chnjp.com/news/index.jsp?FileIdx=17064
http://www.ttcen.com/html/2006-10/13304.htm
http://www.hoohoohoo.com/html/news_7622.html
http://www.jce-net.com/email/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=35&ID=5980http://www.tourvy.com/read.php?tid-2682-fpage-25.html
http://www.tourvy.com/read.php?tid-2682-fpage-21.html
http://www.tourvy.com/read.php?tid-2682-fpage-48.html
http://sh.focus.cn/msgview/10895/64809749.html
http://tt.mop.com/backyard/read_1325973.html
http://paowang.com/cgi-bin/forum/viewpost.cgi?which=inn&id=228434
http://bbs.cnnb.com.cn/simple/index.php?t582833.html
http://bbs.chinaiiss.org/dispbbs.asp?boardid=39&id=37196
http://www.rtomato.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=705
http://www.kaifulee.com/modules/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=92751
http://forum.cmbchina.com/cmu/viewthread.aspx?postid=1308695
http://www.vankeweekly.com/vankebbs/printpage.asp?BoardID=6&ID=1057538
http://www.metroer.com/bbs/archiver/?tid-101554.html
http://www.goolai.com/index.php/action_viewnews_itemid_875.html
http://mychannel.com.tw/channel/class/show_preview.php3/?d=2007-03-28&enname=asian333a&t=.htm&fn=main&view=1
http://joyo.ru/html/news/20070307/398.html
http://text.tsctv.net/?q=node/5178

An employee of Baidu, the Google of China, has leaked this document folder that includes keywords, a long list of web addresses that have been deleted from the Chinese web .The full leaked folder is available for download here.

Internet Censorship in China (II)

Security concerns shape China’s official internet and information technology strategies. These include concerns shared by many countries: promoting a strong and growing economy, providing information assurance, and defending against foreign intrusions into China’s information space. Most importantly for the Chinese, information security includes a political element not found in many other nations – control by the party and the state over communications and the flow of information. The rapid spread of internet access and mobile communications pose a serious challenge to this goal. In response, China’s security apparatus is reorienting its informational defenses.

China’s primary objective in internet security is political– preventing IT from eroding the regime’s authority. Information security is defined in China as “a comprehensive concept understood in a broad sense, and it involves political, economic, cultural, ideological, media, social and military level or field.” It includes “data, system, network, infrastructure.” Chinese officials worry about the potential of the Internet to contribute to the loss of state secrets, offer new avenues for organizing dissent and opposition, and spread “harmful information.” This makes controlling access to "harmful network information” and the ability to monitor and intercept communications top priorities.

China’s internal security apparatus is extensive .Their missions include not only conventional counterterrorism, counterespionage, and critical infrastructure protection, but a political role that reflects the continuing (albeit diminishing) absence of a clear line between state and party in China. A heritage of security practices from an earlier era emphasizes secrecy, vigilance, and action against both foreign intruders and internal dissent. China appears to apply these security policies and practices to new technologies and the behaviors they produce.

Directed by the State Council, there is an interlocking series of efforts by competing ministries to build a layered approach to network and information security. It includes providers. These regulations give the state the authority to compel actions or behaviors.

-- A complementary set of regulations that gives Beijing the authority to regulate software, in particular network security and encryption software.
-- Government organizations and personnel with an Internet security control mission, including the Ministries of Culture, Information Industries, Public Security, and State Security.
-- A strong technological component that uses network architecture, human intervention, and software tools for monitoring online activity and interfering with access to information.
-- A system of voluntary compliance and self-regulation among the larger private networks and service providers to complement the already high degree of control in state-operated systems.
-- A long-term effort to move to reliance on indigenously developed software that would have the benefits of both greater control by Beijing and less potential for malicious activities by foreign intelligence services. The development of indigenous software is a crucial element of China’s planning on how to manage security risks created by the Internet.

Internet censorship and freedom of speech

Internet censorship and freedom of speech

It is not unusual to hear Internet users in cyberspace complain that their freedom of speech have been violated. Usually the users claim that the government has censored them in one way or another. They claim that by deleting or blocking a message from a discussion area, the government has committed violations of human rights to freedom of speech.

Personally, I believe that everyone has the right to express freely. As Voltaire's said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." However, there is no absolutely freedom in the world. For example, soldiers do not have the right to give away military secrets, witnesses are not free to lie under oath and commercial advertisers may not make fraudulent claims. In practice , the freedom of speech is commonly subject to limitations.

Here is the Internet Security, Protection, and Management Regulations approved by the State Council of china on December 11, 1997.
No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:

1,Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations;
2,Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
3,Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;
4,Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities;
5,Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;
6,Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder;
7,Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people;
8,Injuring the reputation of state organs;
9,Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.

Therefore, some people use the communication potential of cyberspace to advocate illegal,dangerous,or violent activity. For example,a post on a message base devoted to radical political discussions that may advocate violent or illegal resistance to government policies. Does the government sensor such speech?
The answer is always a “yes”!

Great firewall of china

Great firewall of china

I’d like to say the Chinese Internet Filtering system is one of the most sophisticated in the world. why? In this article, I will show what kind of content is blocked by Chinese ISPs.

The Golden Shield Project, namely, the firewall of china, is owned by the government of china and started in 1998. It was supposed to monitor, filter, and block sensitive online content. This internet filtering system is decentralized and flexible. It don’t target the whole domain extensions (i.e. .com or .us) or specific types of websites (i.e. pornographic websites), but rather keywords. These keywords relate to some materials such as groups the Chinese government has banned, political ideologies they consider unacceptable and historical events the Chinese government do not wish to have discussed.

Politically sensitive content is the main target of the censorship in China. Hot topics include “Tibet”, “Taiwan” and “falun gong”. Websites offering political information are blocked such as BBC and a voice of American. When users attempted to view one of them, they are punished with an involuntary time-out lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. Search engines are similarly restricted. If you enter the characters for "democracy" or "08chapter" into Google.cn you will generally get zero results.

Similar methods are applied to blogs . If internet user write or discuss sensitive issue, it will be defined as “harmful information” and be erased soon, and in the most egregious cases blogs are shut down altogether.

Chat tools are censored too.For example, Tom-Skype, a kind of chat tools, operates a text filter. The filter has a list of words which will not be displayed in Skype chats. The text filter operates on the chat message content before it is encrypted for transmission if the message is found unsuitable for delivery, it is discarded and not delivered anywhere.

Internet Censorship in China

The Internet Censorship in China
If you search sensitive terms on different searching platforms,you will see the searching result are different too!

I did this experiment on the platforms of Google.com、Google.cn and Baidu.com. By doing this, you can see how does Chinese government filter Internet content. I searched two different kind of items.
The first item is '零八宪章'.(08 Chapter is an open letter that was issued by 303 Chinese writers, intellectuals, lawyers, journalists, retired Party officials, workers, peasants, and businessmen, for the purpose of calling for legal reforms, democracy and protection of human rights in China) and the second one is '法轮功'( falun gong)
Of course, the search terms are in Simplified Chinese. The browser is Internet explore 7.0.

The searching results for ‘零八宪章’
1, Google.com gives the searching results
2, Google.cn Forbidden Message and the web page shows "according to local legislation and policy, the searching results can not be shown"
3, Baidu.com Forbidden Message and the web page shows "according to local legislation and policy, the searching results can not be shown"

The searching results for '法轮功'
1, Google.com gives the searching results
2, Google.cn Forbidden some Message and the web page shows "according to local legislation and policy, part of results can not be shown"
3, Baidu.com Forbidden some Message and the web page shows "according to local legislation and policy, part of results can not be shown"　

Conclusion
Obvious, The content of ‘08 Chapter’ and ‘falun gong’ were filtered by Chinese government at ISP level. I understand that it is necessary to show 'Forbidden Message' because the content relevant to ‘08 Chapter’ and 'falun gong'is negative and may endanger the communist party's status in china and poison people's brain. However, from another perspective, Google.com is closer to the truth than Baidu.com and Google.cn. Both of them seem indeed a more active participant in the government's information control schemes.