The Great Firewall of China

The Atlantic has a great story clearing up a lot of the misconceptions about the Chinese government's internet censoring efforts. The net has been heralded as a tool for freedom of speech and expression, yet censoring and filtering has been rampant in countries like China, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. The OpenNet Initiative covers many of these efforts.

Anyways, The Atlantic's story says that the Chinese effort is much more complicated and less effective than presumed. In effect, what the authorities have done is introduce a surmountable barrier which serves to focus the Chinese in on themselves:

All the technology employed by the Golden Shield, all the marvelous mirrors that help build the Great Firewall—these and other modern achievements matter mainly for an old-fashioned and pre-technological reason. By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play.