Latest news with #GreatFirewall
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘Alarming' rise in regional internet censorship in China, study finds
China's authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country's internet censorship regime in the central province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country. A research paper published this month by Great Firewall Report, an internet censorship monitoring platform, found that internet users in Henan, one of China's most populous provinces, were, on average, denied access to five times more websites than a typical Chinese internet user between November 2023 and March 2025. 'Our work documents an alarming sign of regional censorship emerging in China,' said the researchers, who include authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Stanford University. China has the world's most sophisticated and extensive internet censorship regime. Internet users cannot access most western news websites or social media platforms, including services provided by Google, Wikipedia and Meta. Within what has been dubbed the 'great firewall', online content is monitored and censored by a mixture of government authorities and private companies complying with laws that require them to delete any content considered 'sensitive'. That includes any information about historical or current events that goes against the Chinese Communist party's official narrative. The researchers began looking into the topic after internet users in Henan reported that websites accessible in other parts of China were inaccessible in their province. They found that millions of domains that were not blocked by China's centralised firewall were at some point inaccessible in Henan. By buying servers from internet cloud providers, the authors tested the flow of internet traffic from locations within Henan. They tested the internet's top 1m domains daily between November 2023 and March 2025, with a gap of several months in 2024. The results showed that the Henan firewall blocked nearly 4.2 million domains at some point during the research period, over five times more than the roughly 741,500 domains blocked by China's national firewall. The domains that were specifically blocked in Henan were mainly from business-related websites. There have been several finance-related protests in Henan in recent years, which the researchers speculated could be the reason for the additional controls on access to information about the economy being controlled. In 2022, thousands of people in Henan took part in several demonstrations after they were blocked from withdrawing cash from their bank accounts. The crisis escalated when protesters reported that their mobile health codes, part of the pandemic control measures in place at the time, had turned red, preventing them from travelling or entering buildings. Five officials were later punished for abusing the health code system to quell the protests. Other parts of China have also been subjected to enhanced internet controls. In July 2009, following deadly ethnic riots, the Chinese government imposed an internet blackout in Xinjiang, a region in western China home to the Uyghur minority, that lasted 10 months. Since then, the use of the internet in Xinjiang has been much more tightly monitored than in the rest of the country. Online activities in Tibet are also strictly controlled. The emergence of a regional censorship regime in Henan is unusual because it is not a region of China that is normally considered especially restive by the Chinese authorities. The researchers could not determine if the enhanced controls were imposed by the local authorities in Henan or the central government in Beijing. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Rapid advances in China's artificial intelligence companies are a boon to both the censors and those who wish to evade them. China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) recently unveiled new surveillance tools that can monitor people who use virtual private networks, software that allows people to circumvent the internet firewall. The MPS's research institute also showcased a tool that it claimed could monitor accounts on Telegram, a messaging app. The tool has already collected more than 30bn messages, the institute claimed. Mingshi Wu, the lead author of the Henan study, who uses a pseudonym to protect their identity, said: 'On the one hand, AI could be leveraged to create more sophisticated, adaptive, and efficient censorship and surveillance tools. On the other hand, AI also enables new opportunities for those seeking to understand and circumvent censorship. For example, AI can assist in developing more agile testing tools for detecting censorship.' The Henan Cyberspace Affairs Commission could not be reached for comment. Additional research by Lillian Yang
Globe and Mail
30-04-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Should You Buy Amazon Stock as Its Secretive Space Project Kuiper Launches?
Amazon's (AMZN) space internet services seem to be taking flight as the company successfully launched its first 27 Project Kuiper satellites aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida. This marked the beginning of a planned 3,236-satellite constellation designed to provide global broadband internet access. This is after years of development and a previous attempt that was postponed due to weather conditions. Amazon is also expected to report its Q1 earnings tomorrow, May 1, and the stock is now down 17.6% year-to-date. Does this space venture make AMZN stock a buy-the-dip opportunity now? Amazon to Challenge SpaceX in the Satellite Internet Race This launch is Amazon's most significant bet outside its core e-commerce and cloud businesses. Kuiper could eventually connect millions of individuals in rural and underserved areas worldwide to the internet. The company is targeting the same market as SpaceX. However, Starlink, the SpaceX subsidiary, is far ahead, and the satellite broadband business is capital-intensive and fiercely competitive. So, Amazon is quite late to the party here. Catching up won't be easy, as SpaceX has already put more than 8,000 satellites into orbit and serves over 5 million customers in 125 countries. In contrast, Amazon is just getting started, with only 27 operational satellites so far and a tight regulatory deadline to deploy half its constellation by mid-2026. Can Kuiper Succeed? Amazon has deep pockets and is spending up to $20 billion on this project. With that in mind, the company might be able to eke out some good market share vs. SpaceX. User terminals are expected to cost under $400 and deliver up to 400 Mbps, so Amazon is targeting governments and enterprises too. Goldman Sachs forecast earlier this year that the base case for the satellite market was $108 billion by 2035, up from $15 billion. In their most optimistic 'Blue Sky' scenario, Goldman Sachs sees the market at $457 billion. If Amazon does manage to dominate here, this could be a massive high-margin revenue source, perhaps comparable to its e-commerce business. Should You Buy Amazon Stock as Kuiper Launches? If you are looking to buy AMZN stock just because of Kuiper, I'd suggest looking deeper into the business here. Kuiper alone does not make Amazon a buy, as the low Earth orbit satellite segment is still new, and a lot could go wrong. Amazon is very unlikely to dominate this market. It's a big market for sure, but Goldman Sachs noted that '...53,000 of the estimated 70,000 launches over the next half-decade are likely to be from China.' And it is almost a given that Kuiper will not derive any notable revenue from China, as that would violate the country's Great Firewall. As a result, Kuiper and SpaceX would have to fight for the remaining market. Amazon is not going to capture all of that. I'd instead focus on the cloud and e-commerce business when valuing AMZN stock. The mean analyst price target of $246.43 implies 36% upside.
Epoch Times
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Hundreds of Falun Gong Practitioners Gather at Chinese Consulate in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO—Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners rallied on April 25 in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, marking the anniversary of 10,000 fellow practitioners' peaceful appeal 26 years ago in Beijing, the political center of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The group made the appeal in 1999 for freedom of belief to follow their meditative practice of Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, and for the CCP to stop harassing practitioners throughout the country. Practitioners in Beijing were told at the time that the issue had been resolved after then-Prime Minister Zhu Rongji met with several representatives. Upon the news, the 10,000 people, who had gathered of their own accord, packed up as quietly as they had arrived and left to return to their homes across China. 'They were seeking basic human rights in the most peaceful way,' Kerry Huang, one of the practitioners who appealed in Beijing, told The Epoch Times. The rally became a yearly event following the CCP's decision to launch a full-scale persecution of Falun Gong a few months later in July 1999, Huang said. Practitioners have since faced coercion to renounce their beliefs, arrest, imprisonment, torture, and even death. 'We are here to [raise] awareness of the still ongoing persecution, and to tell people truthfulness, benevolence, and forbearance, [the core values of Falun Gong,] is for everybody, and ... society will be better through cultivating by such principles.' Related Stories 4/29/2024 4/29/2024 Deepak Yadav, an entrepreneur from India, told The Epoch Times, 'That's a historic day in the world, to see such a peaceful practice, a peaceful appeal, peaceful event, where practitioners came and they appeal very peacefully to the government to stop harassing them.' 'It's basically a reminder of how important human rights are for people, and if we have to stand for something, how peacefully we can do, and what is the right way,' Yadav, also a Falun Gong practitioner, added of the historic day. Alex Wang and Julia Zhu, a couple who recently arrived to San Francisco from mainland China, said they were deprived of a normal life following being arrested and detained for 10 days in late 2021 for spreading cards with QR codes that could help people to read uncensored information about China by bypassing the regime's Great Firewall. 'We lost our decent jobs in the college and couldn't find another one being constantly harassed by police officers,' Wang said. Although the couple managed to leave China and arrived in San Francisco in 2024, Wang's mother was left behind because her passport was invalidated by the authorities. Wang said his mother was arrested again in China and is now facing a trial. 'Every practitioner in China, like our family, may suddenly lose a normal life due to the persecution.' Practitioners demonstrate in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco on April 25, 2025. Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times According to Falun Gong's information site 'I think if more people can gather and demonstrate peacefully, it has strength in it,' Gabor from Hungary said as he passed by the protesters while sightseeing. 'Keep up the good fight, but it's not easy,' he said. Local resident Kim Quinteros said she was saddened by the persecution. 'Many oppressed people don't have a voice in society, and big business and people with money are the only voices that matter, and that is very horrible, and I don't agree with that.' 'I believe everyone has a right to live their lives freely, without persecution, and be able to find their own truth and follow their own passions,' another passerby named Patrick from New York said. 'It's well known that there's really gross and evil human rights violations in China in general, how they treat their people, and there needs to be radical change over there, really put power back to the people there, and really reinforce their true natural born given rights there, yet the government in place right now is not interested in any of that.' 'You can see from the signs that you have here, it's just probably the tip of the iceberg of what's really going on over there,' he said. Crystal Lu and Gary Wang contributed to this report.
Express Tribune
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Autocracy Inc
The writer is a UET graduate and holds Master's degrees from Sargodha University and Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad. He can be contacted at wajahatsultan6@ Listen to article The rise of autocracy has become a defining challenge for modern democracies. Autocracy in the 21st century is an interconnected global phenomenon. What does it mean? It means autocracy doesn't function in isolation now. Nowadays, different autocracies are networked together and function through various mechanisms. Autocratic regimes, despite ideological differences, allied together to resist democratic values. For example, countries like China, Iran and Russia have common goals. Russia is a nationalist state, China is a communist state and Iran is a theocratic state. All these states differ in ideology but they have a common goal across the globe: to undermine the rule of law, an independent judiciary, independent media and human rights — which threaten their authority. These states not only suppress opposition within their borders but also go hand in hand in coordinating efforts to discredit the democratic allure on the global stage. Autocracies work slowly and gradually. They penetrate the institutional setup in such a way that people fail to recognise the early signs of autocracy. For example, in Poland, the ruling party's politicisation of the judiciary initially went unnoticed. Later on, when the judiciary directly impacted public life in matters of abortion rights and corruption scandals, people began to notice the impact. With time, it becomes difficult for citizens to mobilise against autocracy until the damage becomes severe. The main idea of this piece is that today's autocracy is more sophisticated. It relies on complex, sophisticated networks that blend kleptocracy, narrative control and global influence. Modern-day autocracies function like global corporations with shared interests. They support each other through businesses, transactions, exchanges, arms trade and cooperation through ideas. In the previous century, autocracies share ideals, as seen in figures like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. Nowadays, autocracies share ideas. In the previous centuries, controlling land was an important tool to control enemies. In modern times, controlling information is a new tool for hegemony, power and control over narratives. Once we all believed that technology would integrate more societies and eventually democracy would prevail. But at the same time, we come to know how certain big autocratic powers can tame technology to stifle dissent and manipulate public opinion. Autocratic governments have developed sophisticated networks of controlling information, using both propaganda and cutting-edge technology to maintain power, influence and control. An emerging superpower built a Great Firewall to block all kinds of internet access that were deemed threats to their regime. With time, the Great Firewall idea translated into the broader system of surveillance. These surveillance systems are not just about controlling narratives, but also about predicting and preventing dissent before it happens. Overall, by leveraging technology and global influence networks, major autocratic powers have maintained clout at home and abroad — challenging democratic values. Modern dictators and autocrats don't use violence to promote themselves or control opponents. They use sophisticated smear campaigns that target ideas of democracy, as well as the people who promote those ideas. Autocrats don't just discredit ideas of freedom and democracy. They chase the person who promotes them. They accuse activists of treason and foreign conspirators. They undermine their credibility to isolate them and then neutralise their campaigns for human rights. Moreover, autocracies pass such laws that ban NGOs and civic organisations. Once again, modern technology — social media, once seen as a liberating force — is now a battleground where state-sponsored campaigns, and bots work to harass activists and crush political campaigns. In short, modern autocracies use more sophisticated technology, interconnected networks and disinformation to undermine democracy globally.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China censors some tariff-related content on social media
By Farah Master and Jessie Pang HONG KONG (Reuters) - China began censoring some tariff-related content on social media on Wednesday after U.S. "reciprocal" tariffs on dozens of countries took effect, including massive 104% duties on Chinese goods, while posts criticising the U.S. were top hits. Hashtags and searches for "tariff" or "104" were mostly blocked on social media platform Weibo, with pages showing an error message. Other hashtags, particularly those suggesting that the U.S. has an egg shortage, were amongst the most viewed on Weibo. State broadcaster CCTV started a hashtag "#UShastradewarandaneggshortage." The U.S. is "waving the tariff stick in a high profile manner, imposing tariffs on EU steel and aluminium products... but also writing letters to European countries in a low voice, urgently asking for eggs," CCTV said in a post on Weibo. The censorship also extended to WeChat, where a wide range of posts from Chinese companies that highlighted the negative impact of Trump's tariffs were taken down by the platform, according to a Reuters review. The censored posts were all marked by the same label stating the "content was suspected of violating relevant laws, regulations, and policies". Beijing announced counter-tariffs on the U.S. last week and has vowed to fight what it views as blackmail. Internet censors have also allowed mocking U.S. comments to proliferate on Chinese social media, depicting the United States as a globally irresponsible trading partner, as China prepares the stage for a wider trade fight with the world's biggest economy. China controls the internet through a system known as the "Great Firewall" and social media posts are routinely censored when deemed detrimental to national interests. Foreign social media networks such as Instagram and X are blocked, a system that has created a captive market for domestic alternatives. Beijing lawyer Pang Jiulin, who has more than 10.5 million followers on his Weibo account, said China's share of exports to the U.S. would quickly be replaced by countries such as Vietnam and India, and Chinese companies would lose the opportunity to continue exporting to the U.S. In the face of U.S. economic aggression, China has no way out but to "fight to the end" he said. "If China also increases tariffs to 104%, the prices of American goods including Apple and Tesla will soar, and Chinese will pay a greater price for their favourite American goods." Hitting back with its own tariffs and export controls may not be very effective, given China ships to the U.S. about three times as many goods than the around $160 billion it imports. But it may be the only option if Beijing believes it has a higher pain threshold than Washington has. Chinese stocks tumbled on Monday with the Shanghai Composite Index down 7% in its worst day in five years, but they closed higher on Wednesday, buoyed by state pledges to support local markets. Prominent Chinese commentator Hu Xijin said on Wednesday that Trump's team was "really delusional". "They are at war not only with the whole world, but also with the most basic rules of human society, so their chances of victory are zero," Hu said. "Their reciprocal tariffs will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history for future generations to laugh at."
