Behind the wall: So different the Internet is in China

1. China’s Internet is a different world behind a wall

Hendrik Ankenbrand

business correspondent for China, based in Shanghai.

F. A. Z.

China’s Internet users live in a different world. You can also see it the other way around: link overseas Chinese to the Hotel W-Lan, you have suddenly access to services, the be familiar to you – say, if at all, only by hearsay. This strange world consists of Facebook, Youtube, and Google.

On the Mark Zuckerberg-founded the largest social network on the planet, for example, only a few Chinese are to be found; Facebook is blocked in the people’s Republic, as tens of thousands of other pages from abroad. Especially since the opposition in the Arab spring, their Protest against the authorities on the Facebook-organised, is the page the always your not democratically legitimised autocracy worried Communist party of China is a thorn in the eye.

While there are also in China with the opportunity, in spite of the Locks on Facebook and all other sites. However, a so-called Virtual Private network, abbreviated as VPN. This “data tunnel” suggests that the user don’t want to access them from China from the locked page, but, for example, from the United States.

even Though the service is with a price of around 10 Euro per month is expensive, many of the Chinese middle class is a VPN. But the programs run only rarely, around disorders and an extremely slow connection. In the past, the Chinese censorship authorities have proven to be important political events such as the meeting of the people’s Congress or the party Congress, that you are able to bring the VPN largely to a Standstill, if you want it.

A complete Blockade of Facebook & Co. Beijing obviously doesn’t want to yet. In addition to the loss of Reputation for the country erlitte by foreign experts, talk also the prohibition of economic reasons not to use a VPN, because Many Chinese companies and scientists have to rely on foreign services, such as on the Google search engine. Whether these arguments hold China’s leaders, however, in the future, from a total foreclosure of the Internet, is not identified.

2. Social media are omnipresent

Instead of Facebook, China has Wechat instead of Twitter, Weibo. Social media channels have up to a billion users, and are still outside of the country almost unknown. In China itself but the whole running life of the people through “Social Media” – and with it, significant parts of the economy.