When you go to look for something on the Internet, where do you go immediately? Google, Facebook, Twitter. The Chinese people, however, do not have the luxury of these sites.

The Chinese government imposes harsh regulations on what their citizens can find on the Internet, and the information available is filtered to fit what the government thinks should be posted.The Internet is an online library that you should be browsed through completely, with access to every publication and opinion, regardless if it goes against political beliefs or sheds light on topics that wish to be kept in the dark.It is a basic human right to access public knowledge, and to take them away from someone based on government policy is against the norm.The Chinese government’s censorship of the Internet is a violation of human rights because it denies their citizens knowledge, takes away the ability to have collective expression, and shrouds their citizens’ eyes from the truth of what is happening behind the screens.

Before looking at the current stance of the Chinese government and their surveillance of the Internet, the history of how the Chinese dealt with the invention of the Internet is needed. 

China’s first recorded usage of cyberspace was on September 20th, 1987, when two Chinese scientists sent a message to German with this brief sentence: “Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner of the world,” (CNN). Seven years later, the Internet was then available across China, albeit in a very small amount, when two men from the Institute of Higher Physics at China’s Academy of Sciences built the first cable connector to the World Wide Web on April 20th, 1994. Chinese political leaders recognized that the Internet would be the strongest tool to propel China forward into the Technological Age and aid with the country’s economy, but they also recognized that it could undermine the political stability that threaded the country together. Under the Communist president Jiang Zemin, the Ministry of Public Service began to develop the basis for its Golden Shield Project (now commonly dubbed “The Great Firewall of China”) to survey and remove malicious content from the domains that existed and the ones that would be created in the future (Stanford). Since the start of charting the number of users that accessed the Internet in 2000, Chinese increase in Internet penetration has skyrocketed. In 2000, China had 22,553,646 Internet users out of its population of 1,269,974,572 people, in total a 1.8% penetration. From then, China had a steady increase of about 1-2% every year until 2007, when the Internet exploded and has stayed at a constant increase of 5-6% since. The last recorded statistic states that China has over 720 million Internet users, over half of their population (Internet Live Stats). Although the number of Chinese Internet users makes up the largest percentage of people per capita, the amount of information that they can access is the most censored in the world.

 With the largest Internet population in the world, it would be a reasonable conclusion to say that the Chinese also have the most domains in the world as well. However, this is not the case. The Chinese folks must use domains that are based in China, and they have limited access to any foreign ones.  The main sites that Americans gather their information on all bounce around with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Google, which all happen to be blocked in China; however, China has near replicated these sites: Twitter named Weibo (or micro-blogging), having Youku for YouTube, and RenRen for FaceBook (Anti (Youtube)). Other sites that have been blocked include DropBox, Flickr, BloomBerg, and Instagram (buissnessinsder). The Chinese versions of the permitted sites are routinely patrolled by members of the Golden Shield Project and the ‘50 Cent Army,’ who are employed legions of part-time bloggers and social media users (maybe as many as 2 million) that post stuff on the net that “[is] favorable to the government or [to refute] its critics” (Naughton). These bloggers make sure that any info posted on the Chinese web is reviewed and will leave a brighter impression for what Chinese internet users see. For example, if President Trump tweets “All foreigners are bad #MAGA,” then any person that has a Twitter account can respond with any response, either praising him or cursing him, even going all the way to “F*** you.” That tweet will not be taken down or looked at, and that person will not be investigated. In China, the posts are monitored twenty-four-seven, and any post can be checked and taken down with no second thought. However, this isn’t to say that all posts that toe the line between disapproval of the government and facts are censored. One mirco-blogger wrote a “scathing critique of China’s One Child Policy,” but his tweet was still allowed to be posted (King 338). This freedom of speech is encouraged in America, but kept in the dunce corner of China.  On a side note, China does strictly block sites which are still up for public debate, such as pornography and virtual private networks that people try to use to get around security.     

The reason that China heavily enforces web security is to ensure that their society, which is a “complex system where tensions exist between political demands and economic needs” has the balance between the growth of the free ideas and the push of governmental dominance (Irme 392). This balance of Power VS People is why China does not want citizens to have complete control of what they post on the Internet. 

Chinese officials have realized that to keep their edge in the 21st century, they should allow their citizens to speak and learn what interests them, but limit their options. Instead of letting their citizens bash them online, call for group protests, or band together, the government stays two-steps ahead and stops what could change citizens’ ideals before the plan is even underway. One could see that China does not want to have a social and cultural revolution that has happened in years past, but humans have a right to gather together, to talk of change and new story endings. Chinese officials may claim that they are just trying to prevent an overflow of the dam of information, but they are going directly against what organization they joined and founded in 1948: The United Nations. Articles Nineteen and Twenty do justice to what China kicks into the sewer. Article 19 reads: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Article 20 states: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association (UN.org). From those articles, one can easily draw the fact that having just everyday banter on the Web should be fully allowed and encouraged. A sour comment or trend should not deter a fifth of the world’s Internet population to be on their tip toes when on the Internet.  In Chinese history, there have been several times when the government’s censorship went on frontal attack, such as the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, the Shanghai Subway Crash in 2011, or the Bo Xiali case in 2012. In each separate instance, large amounts of web posts and newspaper articles were released the next day about what had happened. 

However, in the first couple of days following more than 200 articles about each were taken down from the internet (King 330). The reason that the Chinese government is doing this is to keep what the public sees from shedding a negative light into what they do as a country. The government does not want just the normal ups and downs of their society from making people think that they are less than any other government. 

Humans were meant to have access to knowledge and have the right to say what they want, no matter what the consequence. Freedom of speech has been censored and watched against for many years. The Chinese government is looking to make their country have a news based in false ideas and not allowing people to say what they want. People may say that access to knowledge is not a right, but that would not make sense because the government should want their citizens to have different opinions
