The Nine Ways China Blocks American Media

In China this week, if you wanted to watch news of Liu Xiaobo, the now famous Chinese dissident and democracy advocate who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, you could. The Chinese government is interrupting news broadcasts of Xiaobo’s award. Foreign television networks such as CNN and the BBC go dark for several minutes every time the topic is broadcast.

Yet one could get around these restrictions without too much difficulty. Even though the government blocks Chinese people from accessing YouTube, most observers acknowledge that one could skirt the barrier with a modicum of technological knowhow. The government is perfectly aware of this.

Perhaps the point of greatest debate is the extent to which the Chinese government can control the Internet. All Internet traffic flows in and out of the country through groupings of fiber-optic cables at essentially three specific locations. The cables contain what has been described as tiny “mirrors.” When any of China’s estimate 380 million Internet users attempts to link to a website the request is directed to China’s Ministry of Public Security, which employs as many as 50,000 people to monitor communications and media.

However, with media— and media companies—growing exponentially and developing new broadcasting methods all the time, the flow of information has become like to a river descending a mountain. The question is whether it can it be stopped, even if many rocks are placed in its path.

The Chinese government seems to want its citizens to believe that it is not placing rocks, but building a wall—a solid wall of media censorship that has been under construction since 1997. Yet to what extent is it truly capable of controlling all forms of media? In some cases it blocks outright companies it deems threatening.  In other cases it employs a more nuanced screening approach.

The following is a list of major media categories and companies that are either partially or wholly blocked from China’s market.

1) Internet News

• Sites affected: CNN, BBC, Online destinations for many major world newspapers, such as The New York Times
• Censorship: Screened/Selectively blocked
• Method: Connection Resetting

When news of the Chinese crackdown on protesters in Tibet in March 2008 aired on international news sites in China, the government began selectively blocking articles from major news sources. Similarly, this week Chinese Internet users can view parts of the BBC’s website, such as sports and entertainment, but are blocked from its world news section. That is because the Chinese government is filtering the content of these sites using a technique called “Connection Resetting.” Using this technique web pages with key phrases are “timed out” for brief periods. The user’s connection is reset following each attempt to access the blacklisted page. It is convenient for China because it does not have to permanently blacklist a website but can set up the reset mechanism during specific time periods. Key phrases in recent weeks have been “Liu Xiaobo” and “Nobel Prize,” resulting in the pages of dozens of major news sites to be selectively reset.

2) Blogging

• Sites affected: Blogspot, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal
• Censorship: Blocked intermittently/Screened
• Method: IP Blocking/URL Filtering

The Chinese government began blocking WordPress.com (but only the page that allows one to write new entries) in early 2006 after founder Matt Mullenweg refused to self-censor politically sensitive topics in WordPress blogs. Blogspot, Blogger, and LiveJournal have all been blocked at one time or another, and the Chinese government continues to selectively block blogs via Packet Filtering, where “packets” of data are screened for keywords and phrases.  China also employs filters that search for keywords or letter combinations within the URL itself. So if a user tries to connect to a site called Falungong.com, the technology recognizes the URL as being likely to contain anti-government content, and it aborts the connection.

3) Television

• Networks affected: CNN, BBC, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, French satellite channel TV5
• Censorship: Blocked intermittently
• Method: Satellite scrambling

Over the past few weeks, television networks have aired stories about Liu Xiaobo, the now famous imprisoned Chinese dissident and democracy advocate. The government, as it has done for years to broadcasts of sensitive topics, blacked out just those portions of each broadcast covering Mr. Liu. It is able to jam satellites in a similar fashion to jamming radio signals, except on a larger scale. When any of the government’s rumored 50,000 monitors notes that CNN is discussing Mr. Liu, transmitters from all over the country begin pulsing microwaves at the intended target and overpower it.

4) Social Media

• Sites affected: Facebook, Foursquare, Myspace
• Censorship: Totally blocked, with limited access granted to Myspace
• Method: IP Blocking/Packet Filtering

Facebook was allegedly blocked after the deadly riots in Xinjiang in July 2009. The Chinese government believed that Facebook and other social networking sites were being used to organize the riots. Since its blocking, Facebook, more than any other site, has spurred a wave of people looking for ways to get around China’s IP blocks, mainly via encryption or via proxy servers, which conceal the origin of a user’s attempt to access a given site. Foursquare has since been blocked as well, and Myspace is closely monitored.

5) Search Engines

• Sites affected: Google, Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo China, Opera
• Censorship: Screened
• Method: Packet Filtering/DNS Poisoning

In June of 2009, Google fell victim to a cyber attack known as “DNS poisoning.” DNS poisoning is a technique that clogs local “Domain Name Servers” and scrambles the users requests. The result is that the user never obtains the page(s) they are requesting. Google famously declared it would withdraw from the Chinese market when it discovered that the Chinese government was behind the attack. The attack stemmed from Google’s refusal to self-censor searches according to the government’s code (whereby searches for “Falun Gong,” for example, would not be processed). Google has not, in fact, withdrawn yet, nor does it self-censor. Instead, the government liberally censors Google searches using packet filtering techniques. Google’s market share in China has declined dramatically as a result.

6) Video Sites and Vlogging

• Sites affected: YouTube, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo
• Censorship: Totally blocked
• Method: IP Blocking

YouTube was abruptly blocked in March of 2009. When asked to report why, the Xinhua news agency (the mouthpiece of the Communist party) declared that YouTube had aired a fabricated video of police beating protesters in Tibet during riots in Lhasa. The video’s authenticity has not been questioned by other sources. Since YouTube’s blockage, a similar Chinese site called Youku has taken its place and now enjoys great success.

7) Photo Sharing

• Sites affected: Flickr, Photobucket
• Censorship: Blocked intermittently/ Screened
• Method: IP Blocking/Packet Filtering

Flickr was blacked out, like many other sites, in June of 2009 as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest approached. Yahoo’s photo-sharing giant has been blocked intermittently since. While Packet Filtering helps the government filter for photos bearing key words, its army of monitors is kept busy manually sifting through thousands of photos and terminating connections to those deemed unfit for viewing.

8) Radio

• Stations affected: Various broadcasters
• Censorship: Blocked intermittently
• Method: Radio Jamming

Radio jamming technology goes back to World War II and hasn’t changed much since. It involves overriding a radio signal by tuning to the same frequency and transmitting sounds, noises or pulses. A radio broadcaster often knows when they are being jammed—the Chinese government makes it very clear. Instead of a noise or pulse, it plays a continuous loop of traditional Chinese music.

9) Microblogging

• Sites affected: Twitter, Tumblr
• Censorship: Totally blocked
• Method: IP Blocking

Some Chinese citizens are able to avoid the ban via proxy networks. A 46-year-old woman named Cheng Jianping did so to access Twitter.  She was arrested last month for sending a sarcastic “tweet.” Pretending to urge Chinese nationalists to destroy a Japanese booth at the World Expo in Shanghai, she tweeted “Charge Angry Youth!” She was sentenced to a year in a labor camp.

Jack Campbell