The Chinese government has been controlling access to online information for over 25 years. How does this impact the opinions that its netizens can express?
In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Herel Hughes chats with Yaqiu Wang, the research director for China at Freedom House. We began the conversation by zooming in on why the so-great Great Firewall was created in the first place, then zoomed out to look at how it's impacting Chinese society today.
In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Herel Hughes chats with Yaqiu Wang, the research director for China at Freedom House. We began the conversation by zooming in on why the so-great Great Firewall was created in the first place, then zoomed out to look at how it's impacting Chinese society today.
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00:00Welcome to Zoom In Zoom Out, your global look at news from Taiwan and around the region.
00:16I'm Harrell Hughes.
00:17In 1998, China's government launched an ambitious project called the Golden Shield.
00:23Its goal was to counter the rise of the internet and stop the spread of information.
00:27This virtual boundary is now called the Great Firewall.
00:30To learn more about this project and the effects it's had on Chinese society, we are joined
00:34today by Yaqiu Wang.
00:35Yaqiu is a research director for China at Freedom House and has years of experience
00:40in researching the CCP's role in internet censorship and human rights violations.
00:46Yaqiu, welcome to the show.
00:48Thank you for having me.
00:50So just to get started, we want to zoom in and establish what is the Great Firewall.
00:55So can you describe it to someone who may have never heard of this project before?
00:59For laymen, I think the basic idea is, you know, the government blocks on the fundamental
01:05level of websites that it doesn't want people to see.
01:10People inside China don't get to see the news, read about, learn about things that the government
01:16doesn't want you to learn about, the history of the Chinese Communist Party, anything related
01:23to the Chinese leadership, top leadership, whether it's about their private life, their
01:28wealth, you know, infighting, things like that is probably the most sensitive.
01:34And Xi Jinping is the most sensitive of the most sensitive topic.
01:39Then there are other issues like protests and human rights violations.
01:43The most well-known example is the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
01:46I mean, the censorship is done so well that, you know, for the rest of the world, especially
01:53that iconic attack man picture, you know, for the rest of the world, for people know
01:58that picture, people know Tiananmen Massacre happened.
02:02But for most people, young people in China who have not experienced the massacre, I would
02:09say most people don't know that this event happened.
02:12So you mentioned that the tech has become so evolved over the years.
02:16Do people notice the effect it has on their daily life?
02:19Or is it just sort of integrated within society at this point?
02:23I would say it depends on the generation.
02:26I mean, I'm in my mid-30s.
02:27So, you know, when I was in college, that was the time, you know, the Beijing Olympic
02:32happened.
02:33So I had a memory of Google was accessible.
02:37I was able to read the New York Times, The Economist.
02:40I was able to use Facebook for a while.
02:42Right.
02:43So I had that memory of open Internet.
02:45So then, of course, we all experienced a dramatic closing down over the years.
02:52But I think, you know, for people who are in their 20s or, you know, who are teenagers
02:56now, they had never experienced Facebook or they had never experienced Google.
03:01So they didn't know.
03:02They didn't experience that period when China was connected with the wider global Internet.
03:08So they had no idea.
03:09So for those people, you know, when you don't know the alternative, they don't know the
03:15alternative existing.
03:17So it's been over 25 years, essentially, since this project started.
03:21How has it had to adapt to technology changing?
03:24Do you think leaders anticipated the Internet growing as fast as it did or becoming so integrated
03:29into daily life?
03:30I think they have adapted to it remarkably well, because one key message I try to send
03:38to people who are outside of the Chinese, you know, the Great Firewall is that people
03:44in China, they have Internet and that Internet functions pretty well.
03:50You know, they have the entertainment they wanted to watch.
03:53They play games.
03:54Oftentimes, it's more convenient than the Internet you have outside of China.
04:01But what people inside China, they don't have is, you know, any kind of content the government
04:06doesn't allow you to access.
04:09You know, it's not just a website that you type the address, you know, you type google.com,
04:14it doesn't show up.
04:15Right.
04:16When you discuss an issue, you can't post a comment because it contains a certain sensitive
04:22word.
04:23So that kind of political censorship is very sophisticated.
04:28It's very robust.
04:30But while when it's outside of political sensitive content, you have great shows to watch.
04:36You play games.
04:37You talk about movie stars, sports stars.
04:41So because, you know, the Internet exists and functions well outside of the political
04:50sphere, people don't know that they are missing a large part of it.
04:56So that's for the people inside the country, right?
04:59For people outside the country, always tell them, you know, when you imagine the Chinese
05:03Internet, it's not like a gray and dark or depressing place that there's just censorship.
05:10There's nothing exists.
05:11There is a robust Internet existing in China.
05:14It's just there's not, you know, there's no content that are critical of the Chinese government.
05:22So you say part of the adaptation was creating their own Internet ecosystem and letting people
05:27thrive within that, but keeping it everyone else out in a way.
05:31Exactly.
05:32Exactly.
05:33I mean, you know, like people even I know a lot of Chinese diaspora who came from China.
05:39They go watch the shows.
05:40They go to the inside the wall to watch more interesting, entertaining stuff.
05:47So in your years of researching China and the CCP's role in censorship, would you deem
05:53this project as successful or effective?
05:56Well, I think it's, I would say extraordinarily successful, unfortunately.
06:05You know, when I talk to people in China or people who just recently left China, just
06:11there's just such a gap in understanding of, I would consider facts of events that happened
06:20just because the government has created such a paralleled information space where, you
06:27know, people have people, as I said, people are able to enjoy certain information, certain
06:33content.
06:35But people can't access content of the government deemed politically sensitive.
06:43So just by talking to young people, talking to people who are in China or coming from
06:48China, you just get sense the government has so successively created an alternative information
06:56universe.
07:01Now we want to zoom out.
07:02You've established what is the Great Firewall.
07:05How has it affected how Chinese society is developing?
07:08Well, I think first, it was the Internet as the web, the browser, you know, websites.
07:17I think the Internet has so much have moved from a web-based Internet to an app-based
07:24Internet.
07:25I mean, you know, I was saying so many websites that get blocked, right?
07:29I think right now, people mostly don't go to any websites.
07:34They just go to an app.
07:35So it becomes a little like wall-off gardens.
07:40You go to Xiaohongshu, you open the app of Xiaohongshu, then there are the censorship
07:44and surveillance managed by the company that owns Xiaohongshu.
07:49Then you go to WeChat and there's another set of censorship, right?
07:51Of course, they all take directions and orders from the Chinese government.
07:56But right now, it's even more limited than the initial idea of just blocking websites
08:05that the government doesn't allow.
08:09People don't even go to websites anymore.
08:11They just open their apps and read what is ever provided within the apps.
08:17Is it just political content that's censored or are we seeing it in entertainment as well?
08:23I think sensitive information is always censored.
08:25Then there are more and more types of political sensitive information.
08:29That is for sure.
08:30But there are also, you know, information regarding cultural events, gender roles, things
08:36like that also get more and more censored.
08:39Basically LGBT content, women's rights content, even just content depicting a romantic love
08:48affair.
08:49Things like that are getting more and more censored.
08:51I think it's also because besides political censorship over political content, it's also
09:00Xi Jinping wants China to go back to the traditional culture, traditional family values, men supposed
09:12to play the traditional men's role, women play the women's role.
09:17So overall, the cultural sphere become more and more conservative.
09:21That's what the Chinese government wants.
09:23And also that is reflected on the internet censorship.
09:26The government censors more and more content that have progressive values.
09:32So what happens to people who hit these censors?
09:35Do we see forms of punishment?
09:37Do we see intimidation?
09:40What happens to people?
09:42I think the first thing that happens to you is that your account, your social media account
09:46gets suspended or removed.
09:49I mean, especially when your WeChat account gets removed, it's a big thing.
09:52It's not just, you know, you cannot express yourself or you cannot see other people's
09:56posts because WeChat is a super app.
09:58It's tied to your bank account, your taxi account, your food ordering account.
10:05It's a super app.
10:07So if you say something wrong and your account gets suspended, your real life gets really
10:13affected.
10:14So, you know, that's one aspect.
10:17Then the other can be real, you know, punishment in the sense of police harassment, police
10:22intimidation, or, you know, detention.
10:27And the worst, you get sentenced to years in jail.
10:30So this year marks 35 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre.
10:35In your research of this, have you noticed a change in how people are talking about it?
10:39Yeah, yeah, that for sure.
10:41I think if I actually glue myself onto the Internet, I will be able to see dissent.
10:49But it gets removed so quickly.
10:51So let's say some protests in China happen, right?
10:55If right now at 10 p.m. Washington, D.C. time, if I go and check out the Chinese Internet,
11:01I will be able to find things, the dissent people are expressing.
11:05But if I don't watch it right now, tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. I go to work, I start to
11:09check the Internet, things are gone.
11:11So I, you know, I would always say that people do have dissent and people do express dissent,
11:18but it gets removed quickly.
11:21That doesn't mean that it never existed on the Chinese Internet.
11:28So it requires you to really watch it intently.
11:32I mean, most people, they don't, right?
11:34So, you know, next day you check the Internet, it's not there.
11:37It doesn't mean that it never existed.
11:39So I always try to remind people to not have that kind of assumption.
11:44Have you noticed a lot of self-censorship as well?
11:47Well, of course, if you live in China, like, that's just, you know, you breathe there,
11:55like self-censorship.
11:57That's just like you breathe air and exhale CO2, right?
12:02That's just life because of the severe punishment for speaking up.
12:08So I mean, that's like knee-jerking, it's almost, I would say, in your brain.
12:14Well, I also want to talk about how a lot of dissent has had to move abroad because
12:19of this.
12:21And one of the most famous dissenters, Li Laoshi, or Teacher Li, as many know him on
12:26Twitter, and he has 1.5 million followers on Twitter.
12:30Can you talk more about dissent moving abroad?
12:32Because expressing dissent is getting harder and harder within the Chinese Internet,
12:39whether it's on Weibo, WeChat, or Xiaohongshu, or Douyin, Doupan.
12:43So people have no alternatives, so they have to jump over the wall, right?
12:48So definitely they wanted to express dissent on the free Internet.
12:54They also wanted to access free information on the free Internet.
12:57That's a big reason why Teacher Li has such a big following.
13:03As I know that during the white paper protest, there was a surge of following on
13:10Teacher Li's account because people in China were so curious about what's going on.
13:15I know that a lot of people send their messages to him, like whatever happening to
13:22them, the grievances they have, or human rights abuses they observe in China, send
13:29this information to Teacher Li because he also has such a big platform.
13:34So if he posts the information, it gets read by a lot of people.
13:38Then if you post the information yourself on your own account.
13:43Well, yeah, Chou, I think that that covers everything that we wanted to talk about in
13:46terms of the Great Firewall.
13:47Thank you so much for joining us today.
13:50Thank you so much for having me.
13:52This has been Zoom In Zoom Out.
13:54For more stories from Taiwan Plus News, please follow us on social media.
13:57Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.
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