Censorship in China

Censorship is the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. Censorship in China has been practiced throughout its history including the burning of Confucian texts by Emperor Qin in the third century BCE and the control of media during the Cultural Revolution. With the rise of the internet, China has an army of bots and millions of human censors working around the clock to police daily activities. This effort is commonly known around the world as the Great Firewall.

The Great Firewall

Methods for internet censorship include bandwidth throttling, keyword filtering, and blocking access to certain websites. These websites include but are not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Western news sources. It is not known exactly how the Firewall filters through posts, videos, comments, and other forms of user generated content. Some never appear while others appear but are removed, while others appear and stay. Research done in 2014 showed that China allows for the criticisms of the state, its leaders, and their policies, whereas posts with collective action potential are much more likely to be censored. Censorship in China is used to muzzle those outside government who attempt to spur the creation of crowds for any reason—in opposition to, in support of, or unrelated to the government. The government allows the Chinese people to say whatever they like about the state, its leaders, or their policies, because talk about any subject unconnected to collective action is not censored. The value that Chinese leaders find in allowing and then measuring criticism by hundreds of millions of Chinese people creates actionable information for them and, as a result, also for academic scholars and public policy analysts.