The talk about the Berlin Wall has brought up anger in China. The Berlin Wall came down and it changed the lives of citizens and the world. But remembering the fall of the Berlin Wall now has Chinese citizens scrutinizing the Great Firewall of China. This wall serves as a filtering and surveillance program run by the communist government.
Chinese have faced problems in the past. Facebook was shut down during riots in Xinjiang in July and Twitter is also facing problems along with the fact that iPhones aren't allowed to have their key feature: WiFi. Because of government restrictions the iPhone lacks WiFi and that handicaps the sophisticated phone.
For decades Chinese have had limited access to the news and the outside world. The state keeps a tight lip on events that are happening throughout the country and the world. The Chinese government is also trying to put into place the Green Dam which is a censoring software that blocks popular social media pages.
This whole debacle started when Culture Project Berlin created an online "Berlin Twitter Wall" where German tweeters were asked to share their memories of the fall of the wall 20 years ago and "which walls still need to come down for the world to be a better place?" There was a global response and it involved thousands of comments from China complaining about the Great Firewall.
Chinese citizens found a way around the government firewall blocking Twitter and were able to use proxy servers which made the site into an online protest against censorship. It took Chinese censors two days to finally block the website. Before that time there were between 1,500 and 3,300 comments posted on the page.
Before being blocked, one Chinese Twitterer quoted part of President Reagan's speech to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 "Tear down this wall." In the past twenty years the internet has become the way people worldwide communicate. But it has also widened the gap between the young Chinese and their government.
Since the Berlin Wall, China internalized the collapse of the Wall and communism in Eastern Europe. Along with Tiananmen Square protests the same year. In the last 20 years the government has opened slightly and given more personal freedom. Since then calls for greater democratization have quieted.
However, today's youth are generally more focused on improving their social and financial conditions rather than government restrictions. And the government is now trying to tighten security in the country's internet network. This is a harsh reality for Chinese considering internet access was shut off for months following this summers riots.
But the outrage over Twitter, Facebook, and the proposed Green Dam censoring program is taking Chinas censorship to a new level and Chinese youth are being affected. Officials believe this was an incident that will blow, but China might be forced to make some concessions when it comes to censorship.
Tags: china internet restrictions, china social media, firewall, information systems degrees, Information technology degrees, IS security, security, technology and computers
