“This fear factor, this war driver is a very strong one and it’s been with this species ever since the beginning and it motivated the Great Wall of China.”- Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Great Wall of China is actually a series of independent fortifications built in segments at various times in ancient China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. The first walls date to the 7th century BC; these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. They were constructed to project China from invasions from nomadic invasions from Inner Asia.
The Great Wall began when fortifications built by various states during the Spring and Autumn (771–476 BC) and Warring States periods (475–221 BC) that were eventually connected by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to protect his newly founded Qin dynasty (221–206 BC). By 212 BC, they ran from Gansu connecting to the coast of southern Manchuria; 13,170.70 miles long.
Although a useful deterrent at several points throughout its history, the Great Wall failed to stop enemies, including in 1644 when the Qing troops marched through the gates of the Shanhai Pass and replaced the most ardent of the wall-building dynasties, the Ming, as rulers of China proper.
The portion of China’s Great Wall that is visible today dates from the Ming dynasty, since they built much of the wall using stone and brick. These sections remain in relatively good condition or have been renovated, while others have been damaged or deconstructed for their building materials and lost due to the ravages of time. The wall is a revered national symbol of ancient Chinese ingenuity.
China is noted for building walls to prevent people from escaping the restrictions of their tyrannical communist regime and using walls to stop intruders from entering their country. But all of the walls in the world, virtual or physical, cannot prevent negative information leaking out about the reality of living under the world’s most secretive, and restrictive government, the Chinese Communist Party.
In typical Chinese cultism, when the internet became embedded in our global culture, China saw this as a major threat to their security. Beijing panicked and went to work immediately to close the gap before any sensitive information about China’s Communist Party slipped through cyberspace. China’s Internet czar, Lu Wei, proudly said, “We took control of it before it took total control of us.”
China has made all the right moves to bridle the internet. It controls the world’s e-commerce, with a retail sales volume double that of the U.S. It has a 40% global market share according to eMarketer. Looking at data from Statista internet monitor, China’s dominion constrains four of the top 10 internet companies ranked by market capitalization. That is set to improve this year.
What China calls it’s “Golden Shield” is a giant chain of censorship and surveillance devises that block tens of thousands of websites deemed inimical to the Communist Party’s narrative and its strict by-laws. It’s unbelievable that the world community has allowed one rapscallion nation to block content from social media like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and all outside news broadcasts.
Trumpeting its vision of “Internet sovereignty,” beyond a doubt, China has the world’s most effective internet “firewall.” They can censor everything that travels along their space age internet highway.
After two decades of evolution, China claims it created the perfect vehicle to control the internet.
Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too? China’s firewall is far more sophisticated than that of any country. It bridges the country’s most fundamental contradictions. It has an economy openly connected to the outside world, with a political culture completely closed and protected from conspicuous Western values including free speech, democracy, personal freedom and liberty.
China has successfully blocked eight of the 25 most trafficked global internet sites from free trade. The American Chamber of Commerce in China says that four out of five of its companies have reported a negative impact on their business because of China’s outrageous internet censorship policies.
When President Donald Trump took office, he classified China’s internet censorship and outright secrecy a barrier to international free trade that he would correct by evoking higher tariffs on Chinese imports.
Later this year, China is expected to approve a new set of laws on cyber-security that will codify, organize and strengthen its control of the internet. These rules will restrict foreign companies from publishing online content and propose much tougher rules requiring websites to register domain names with the Chinese government if they intend to do business with them now and in the future.
But China and its Communist Party’s greatest fear is free speech. They are fully aware that once people are exposed to the many benefits of democratic government, they will begin questioning their own government for answers. China does not want another Tiananmen Square massacre.
In June 1989, after three weeks of trying to stop student free speech demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government invaded the square and brutally ended the protests. This is historically noted as the Tiananmen Square massacre. China claims it wanted to show the world it would not tolerate any attempt at free speech under the Communist Party’s leadership.
The increased system of censorship and strict retaliation against any country or company that dares to defy China’s internet polices will be blocked until they “mend their ways.” But China is also aware it can’t stop everything. And China is willing to tolerate a certain amount of faults in its Great Firewall, such as third party hacking, as long as it feels it has not lost total control.
Just as The Great Wall of China was not impenetrable, those intent on seeking out and exploiting the cracks in China’s virtual censorship wall will prevail if the case and intentions are for the right reason. While The Communist Party is most concerned with what ordinary people read than what the global community reads, it feels its propaganda machine can cover up most anything.
Google is still blocked in China, and local search engine Baidu has its results heavily censored. But the Chinese searches yield no links to the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests. The question is, how long can China keep hiding the truth?
Just as the Great Wall fell, all others will too once truth reaches the people. Because no wall can forever stop the transmission of truth. “Herman Cain is out there campaigning. He says a lot of provocative things. He said America should build its own Great Wall of China. Cain says it’s a great idea because if there’s one thing you don’t see in China and it is illegal immigrants.” – Herman Cain
