Liberal Road Blog Individual Freedom and Equality

Today as I surfed around the web this news hit my eyes. The Chinese Communist party chief Hu Jintao has announced he wants to “purify” the Internet. Whatever it means in practice this time it may be again bad news for the freedom of speech in China.

The Internet is heavily censored in China. The Great Firewall, as it is called, blocks the access to many websites.

Many of the blocked websites contain information or comments criticizing the Chinese government. Also websites containing information about events the government wants to hide are censored (like the Tiananmen Square events in 1989).

This censorship is a serious violation of the individual freedom. Everyone should be free to say whatever they want to with only few restrictions (which are for example libel, threatening someone, encouraging someone to seriously harm another or privacy reasons).

I personally could confirm the censorship when I traveled in China in winter 2006. Many major foreign press websites were censored (as the BBC). I also tried to access websites about the Tiananmen Square events of 1989 and Falun Gong, without much success.

I however realized that accessing censored website was quite easy using foreign proxies. However some proxy websites were also blocked. I also suppose that using proxies in China to access censored websites can potentially lead to troubles with the police.

For more information about Internet in China I recommend the following page from Reporters Without Borders: link

It will be interesting to see if my website too will be censored in China.

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