A foreigner friendly Internet

Websites blocked, searches re-routed – it’s likely foreigners in China for the Olympics will see an exclusive version of the country’s notorious, heavily-censored Internet.

Beijing-based journalist and author James Fallows says foreign visitors will probably be able to Google for information on touchy subjects like Tibet and check out forbidden sites like Wikipedia. And they will probably head home wondering what the Great Firewall is all about.

But he says:

”… In reality, what the Olympic-era visitors will be discovering is not the absence of China’s electronic control but its new refinement—and a special Potemkin-style unfettered access that will be set up just for them, and just for the length of their stay …

” … According to engineers I have spoken with at two tech organizations in China, the government bodies in charge of censoring the Internet have told them to get ready to unblock access from a list of specific Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—certain Internet cafés, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners are expected to work or stay during the Olympic Games. … ”

Fallows, who works for The Atlantic Monthly, recently wrote the article quoted above – which has lots of technical detail – on exactly how China’s Great Firewall censors the Internet and why it works.

This week, he answers a few questions about his article in an interview with an IT publication.

Fallows says Westerners wonder why Chinese net users don’t demand more freedom of information:

” … Part of the answers might be found in the Pew study, mentioned above. But at a more basic level right now, even with the controls, more Chinese people have more access to freer information than has ever been the case in the country's very long history. So for now it's understandable that more of them are thinking about what they can find than what they can't … ”

China now has more Internet users than any other nation in the world. Earlier this year the number of Chinese on the Internet hit more than 220 million, eclipsing the US’s 216 million users.

Check out 10 ways the Chinese Internet is different from yours.