Great Firewall of China: How to Check if a Website is Censored in China

As most of you know internet in China is censored. The program also called as Great Firewall of China. 

How does this censorship actually implemented in such a volatile and free environment of cyber world. Interestingly this is a very organized effort involving mass scale operation, cyber infrastructure and a daunting number of human resource. (read - http://www.ww24.org/2013/10/internet-censorship-in-china.html ) Censorship is a joint effort between public and private enterprise. 

Social media platform like facebook, twitter are blocked to be accessed from Chinese mainland territory. You may wonder what else is blocked. This can be simply checked from the Great Firewall of China website.

http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org
Updated link (5-May-2018): https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/  

 

You can enter the website which you want to see if is blocked in China and the query server tries to access it from 5 locations in mainland China including Beijing, Shenzen, Inner Mangolia, Heilongjiang Province & Yunnan Province and shows the result. Surprisingly many Google services are also blocked in China.

Internet Censorship in China

China’s has, it seems the biggest enterprises of government internet monitors- supposedly more than 2 million or 20 lac. The workforce behind the world’s most censored nation.

Surprisingly the world’s most populous nation spends heavily in controlling people’s access to web. Recently South China Morning Post published in October 2013 that the Great Firewall will be relaxing and will allow access to websites such as www.facebook.com and www.twitter.com  inside the special Shanghai free trade zone (and not whole of mainland china!). The intent being to make the travelers feel more connected to the external world and thus improve the business prospects.

A recent study (http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/how-internet-censorship-actually-works-in-china/280188/) suggests that social media censorship is incredibly efficient in China. 

Objectionable content is generally removed within 24 hours of their posting. No wonder it might employ 2 million human resources. Besides the government controlled censorship, private companies as well have to stick to the guidelines and employ staff to monitor web activity in the organization.