Tuesday, April 29th, 2008...6:46 pm - Rachael Hainsworth
Bloggers and the Great Firewall of China
Last night on ABC1 Foreign Correspondent’s Stephen McDonell reported on the bloggers of China who are pushing for freer speech in their highly censored country.
There are an estimated 60 million bloggers in China and 230 million Chinese internet users, making it the fastest growing market in the world. Internationally people assume the internet is an open and uncontrollable phenomenon, but in China popular western web sites like Wikipedia, Flikr and YouTube are all restricted.
China has the most sophisticated censorship and internet surveillance of any country in the world. Human rights groups say that about 30 journalists and 50 internet users are known to be behind bars, yet some Chinese bloggers have learnt to work within the system and extend its boundaries.
So how do Chinese get beyond the Great Firewall? They go online in Hong Kong to see what they have been missing out on.
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