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...tens of thousands of censors employed by the government, blocking access to restricted information both at home and abroad is an ongoing struggle. Their work is mirrored by employees of large Web portals who ensure content conforms with official directives. With what is called the "Great Firewall of China," authorities block access to overseas Web pages deemed objectionable and shutter domestic sites that repeatedly stray into restricted territory. Search engines are prevented from linking to sensitive content. Mainland media, which face a host of regulations that limit how they can report the news, are often forced to take down controversial...
...those restrictions, the Internet in China roils with debate over current events. China now has an estimated 384 million Internet users, more than the total population of the U.S. That size, combined with the growing popularity of interactive applications that allow users to generate their own content, has placed great strain on censors' ability to restrict the flow of sensitive information. Often news happens and discussion spreads widely before censors have a chance to decide how to manage the subject. "In this war, the censor is obviously not winning," says Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project...
...extensive Web restrictions increasingly chafe. So they make use of widely available proxies and virtual private networks to fanqiang, or "climb the wall," for access to everything from politics to porn. Censors can further restrict access to overseas sites by slowing or blocking the networks used to bypass the Great Firewall, says Xiao, but they are reluctant to do so for fear of interfering with commercial applications, like secure communications between corporate offices. (See who will profit when Google exits China...
...switch to an overseas server. In late March, when Google began redirecting Chinese search traffic to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong, authorities blocked Ng's site. His daily traffic dropped from more than 20,000 hits to 6,000 overnight, but many mainland users still climb the Great Firewall to view his site...
Because mainland users have to climb the Great Firewall to access Twitter, they generally share an interest in issues of free speech, says Xiao. They discuss news in the unfiltered medium of Twitter and then repost information on mainland blogs and Twitter-like microblogging services. "It is not a fluke," he says. "It's a pattern. The Chinese censors look at this space with great focus and are trying to figure out what to do with...