Golden Shield Project

The political and ideological background of the Golden Shield Project is considered to be one of Deng Xiaoping's favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in."[lower-alpha 5] The saying is related to a period of economic reform in China that became known as the "socialist market economy". Superseding the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution, the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, despite the economic freedom, values and political ideas of the Chinese Communist Party have had to be protected by "swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies.[7]

The Internet in China arrived in 1994,[8] as the inevitable consequence of and supporting tool for the "socialist market economy". As availability of the Internet has gradually increased, it has become a common communication platform and tool for trading information.

The Ministry of Public Security took initial steps to control Internet use in 1997, when it issued comprehensive regulations governing its use. The key sections, Articles 4–6, are the following:

Individuals are prohibited from using the Internet to: harm national security; disclose state secrets; or injure the interests of the state or society. Users are prohibited from using the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit information that incites resistance to the PRC Constitution, laws, or administrative regulations; promotes the overthrow of the government or socialist system; undermines national unification; distorts the truth, spreads rumors, or destroys social order; or provides sexually suggestive material or encourages gambling, violence, or murder. Users are prohibited from engaging in activities that harm the security of computer information networks and from using networks or changing network resources without prior approval.[9]

In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party feared that the China Democracy Party (CDP) would breed a powerful new network that the party elites might not be able to control.[10] The CDP was immediately banned, followed by arrests and imprisonment.[11] That same year, the Golden Shield project was started. The first part of the project lasted eight years and was completed in 2006. The second part began in 2006 and ended in 2008. On 6 December 2002, 300 people in charge of the Golden Shield project from 31 provinces and cities throughout China participated in a four-day inaugural "Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System".[12] At the exhibition, many western high-tech products, including Internet security, video monitoring and human face recognition were purchased. It is estimated that around 30,000-50,000 police are employed in this gigantic project.[13]

A subsystem of the Golden Shield has been nicknamed "the Great Firewall" (防火长城) (a term that first appeared in a Wired magazine article in 1997)[14] in reference to its role as a network firewall and to the ancient Great Wall of China. This part of the project includes the ability to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the six Internet gateways.[15] The system also selectively engages in DNS cache poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical.[16] Because of its disconnection from the larger world of IP routing protocols, the network contained within the Great Firewall has been described as "the Chinese autonomous routing domain".[17]

During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chinese officials told Internet providers to prepare to unblock access from certain Internet cafés, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners were expected to work or stay.[18]

The Golden Shield Project contains an integrated, multi-layered system, involving technical, administrative, public security, national security, publicity and many other departments. This project was planning to finish within five years, separated into two phases.

Mainland Chinese Internet censorship programs have censored Web sites that include (among other things):

• Web sites belonging to "outlawed" or suppressed groups, such as pro-democracy activists and Falun Gong.
• News sources that often cover topics that are considered defamatory against China, such as police brutality, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy sites.[23] These sites include Voice of America and the Chinese edition of BBC News.
• Sites related to the Taiwanese government, media, or other organizations, including sites dedicated to religious content, and most large Taiwanese community websites or blogs.
• Web sites that contain anything the Chinese authorities regard as obscenity or pornography.
• Web sites relating to criminal activity.
• Sites linked with the Dalai Lama, his teachings or the International Tibet Independence Movement.
• Most blogging sites experience frequent or permanent outages.
• Web sites deemed as subversive.

Blocked web sites are indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.[24]

According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added to Google China's blacklist.[25] However, once unblocked, the Web sites will be reindexed. Referring to Google's first-hand experience of the great firewall, there is some hope in the international community that it will reveal some of its secrets. Simon Davies, founder of London-based pressure group Privacy International, is now challenging Google to reveal the technology it once used at China's behest. "That way, we can understand the nature of the beast and, perhaps, develop circumvention measures so there can be an opening up of communications." "That would be a dossier of extraordinary importance to human rights," Davies says. Google has yet to respond to his call.[26]

Because the Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain names and inspects the data being sent or received, a basic censorship circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Most circumvention tools combine these two mechanisms.[27]

• Proxy servers outside China can be used, although using just a simple open proxy (HTTP or SOCKS) without also using an encrypted tunnel (such as HTTPS) does little to circumvent the sophisticated censors.[27]
• Companies can establish regional Web sites within China. This prevents their content from going through the Great Firewall of China; however, it requires companies to apply for local ICP licenses.
• Onion routing and Garlic routing, such as I2P or Tor, can be used.[27]
• Freegate, Ultrasurf, and Psiphon are free programs that circumvent the China firewall using multiple open proxies, but still behave as though the user is in China.[27]
• VPNs (virtual private network) and SSH (secure shell) are the powerful and stable tools for bypassing surveillance technologies. They use the same basic approaches, proxies and encrypted channels, used by other circumvention tools, but depend on a private host, a virtual host, or an account outside of China, rather than open, free proxies.[27]
• Open application programming interface (API) used by Twitter which enables to post and retrieve tweets on sites other than Twitter. "The idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at their own URLs—which the government has to chase down one by one." says Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.[28]
• Reconfiguration at the end points of communication, encryption, discarding reset packets according to the TTL value (time to live) by distinguishing those resets generated by the Firewall and those made by end user, not routing any further packets to sites that have triggered blocking behavior.[29]

Reporters Without Borders suspects that countries such as Australia,[30][31][32] Cuba, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Belarus have obtained surveillance technology from China although the censorships in these countries are not much in comparison to China.[33]

Since at least 2015, the Russian Roskomnadzor agency collaborates with Chinese Great Firewall security officials in implementing its data retention and filtering infrastructure.[34][35][36]

Especially since 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, in order to combat disinformation and enforce the war censorship law, Russia authorities was making internet surveillance system akin to Chinese Great Firewall.[37]

The Golden Shield Project is distinct from the Great Firewall (GFW), which has a different mission. The differences are listed below:

Politically,

1. The GFW is a tool for the propaganda system, whereas the Golden Shield Project is a tool for the public security system.
2. The original requirements of the GFW are from the 610 office, whereas the original requirements of the Golden Shield Project are from the public security department.
3. The GFW is a national gateway for filtering foreign websites, whereas the Golden Shield Project is for monitoring the domestic internet.

Technically,

1. The GFW is attached to the three national internet exchange centres, and then spread to some of the ISPs to implement the blocking effect, whereas the Golden Shield Project stations in the most exchange centres and data centres.
2. The GFW is very powerful in scientific research, including many information security scientists, such as people from Harbin Institute of Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, whereas the Golden Shield Project is less powerful in scientific research.
3. The GFW is built by Fang Binxing, whereas the Golden Shield Project is built by Shen Changxiang.[38]

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Transwiki:Bypassing the Great Firewall of China

• China Digital Times: Internet Control
• Breaking Through the "Golden Shield"
• ViewDNS.info - Chinese Firewall Test - Tests if Golden Shield is performing DNS filtering/redirection on your domain within mainland China.
• Website Test behind the Great Firewall of China
• Lighthouse Metric Report for websites behind the Firewall of China