#AtoZChallenge in China: Great Firewall

In today’s #AtoZChallenge in China, many sites have hit the dust and turned into ashes because of the Great Firewall that cyber-shields China. But is it really that bad?

Prior to leaving for China, I had been warned by my friends that living here would be much more difficult because there would be no Google, Facebook, Twitter, and that I would be secluded from the world. Even in our master’s class where we studied technology and social media, our main topic when talking about China had somehow been connected to the Great Firewall and censorship. And coming from a country where social media is a phenomenon that shows no sign of receding, I must say that I bear a notion that living in China where there’s limited to closed Internet access would be difficult.
But no…
I was amazed by the thriving Internet culture in China. Yes, thriving is the right term to describe how Chinese are using this technology to transform their country into a booming and bullish economy that’s soon to overtake the United States.
G is for the Great Firewall of China
Okay, I’m not saying this for some bullcrap but more than a year of being here has given me that insight into how Chinese are aggressively using the Internet. Outside China, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube are some of the biggest names in social media but in the Middle Kingdom, it’s WeChat with 768 million daily logged in users. Its parent company, Tencent, holds a major share in other similar social media platforms. In terms of online marketplace, forget Amazon or eBay because in China, the Alibaba group is considered the world’s largest retailer. And since Google can’t still penetrate the country yet, Baidu is king in the search engine realm as it controls 80 percent of the market.
And that’s only the icing on the cake. A lot of startups are wise to use various smart platforms for their budding business. You might heard that China was once a “biking country” but because of the closed network in the country, names like Mobike, Ofo, and Bluegogo might sound strange for outsiders. Actually, they’re ride/bike sharing apps that are taking China’s roads by storm. Want to hail a taxi? Uber is in limbo in the Middle Kingdom after its Chinese rival Didi merged with the American company for millions of dollars. Looking at the Chinese app seems to be alienating but once you decode all those characters, the ride will be as smooth as silk. In this time and age in China, e-banking is as easy as ABC. Many people, at least in big cities, are armed with their phones when going to groceries, restaurants, and shops to pay not by cash but via WeChat or Alipay.

As a result, China’s Internet market that connects everyone, from citizens to businesses to the government, has become a lucrative and flourishing domain far from what people outside the Great Firewall think and know. This domain is what I call as China’s “e-cosystem.”
I can’t help but to think that having this massive triumvirate of Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (or “BAT” as they are called) is the reason why China is a force to be reckoned with in terms of the Internet and how they sustain a unique e-cosystem that complements, if not, strengthens the Great Firewall. That, alongside the fact that Internet connection is regulated makes China a country interestingly different from others in terms of cyberspace.
Just recently, I saw a brilliant resource showing the top 5 social media and messaging platforms per country. I was particularly struck by that chart because in 9 out of 10 featured countries, Facebook is the top social media platform. The last one, and you guessed it right, China, WeChat is the top platform. I really hate it that I lost the link to that brilliant chart! I was supposed to insert it here. I spent hours searching for it but the images below are the nearest I got:

As it looks, the Great Firewall has made China closed in terms of social media (aside from WeChat, Sina Weibo is also popular with 313 million monthly active users, and other social platforms). But the Internet isn’t only used for social networking; as state newspaper Global Times put it in an opinion piece published almost a year ago, “the Internet has inherited Western elements” and that the Great Firewall has “quelled Western intentions to penetrate China ideologically.”

The Great Firewall is a system that filters and blocks harmful or unsafe information. It has caused some inconvenience when China and the outside world try to understand each other, but they have gradually adapted to this reality.
As the emergence and development of the Internet is accompanied by the economic and political evolution of Western society, the Internet has naturally inherited Western elements such as Western rules and order. The Great Firewall quelled Western intentions to penetrate China ideologically.
Western media have published major political reports that concern China in recent years, trying to direct the attention of Chinese society and set the discourse agenda for us. The Great Firewall has snuffed out such intentions.
History will positively assess the key role of the system. But it does not mean it will exist forever. As time goes by, it may not be needed when China and the West share an equal footing in terms of soft power.

Very interesting, isn’t it? So now that China is on its way to becoming the next top global power, I can’t help but to wonder if its thriving Internet ecosystem will boom further once the Great Firewall loses its high flame. How would people from the other side of the Firewall behave once it’s extinguished?
I mentioned in my previous post, Fake in China, this black market of shams and counterfeit that circulate the country — and those controversies have been uncovered and exposed by ordinary Chinese netizen, and yes, they are the ones inside the Great Firewall. Early this year, Alibaba cracked down on fake items sold on its online shopping website, Taobao. Last year, Baidu had been entangled in a medical scandal. Tencent has been embroiled with privacy issues with its QQ Browser service.
In terms of soft power through pop culture, one might say China has still miles traveling through the Great Firewall before its music or cinema can trump and make a great impact on other countries.
But remember, China is a great country that can mobilize its people. Look at how they are turning society into a smart and interconnected “e-cosystem” of people and technology. As Global Times said:

The Great Firewall should be designed to make China become more powerful rather than isolated and fragile. We cannot count on it for every external intrigue. But it can earn us time to empower ourselves with soft power and strength.

Thank you for reading this far! My #AtoZChallenge in China will return on Monday with an interesting tidbit about learning Mandarin, so stay tuned.
Featured image from Time.com and Getty Images

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See more of my #AtoZChallenge: Chinese Adventure
A: Adventure on April Fools’ Day
B: Bāxiān guòhǎi (八仙过海 Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea)
C: Chuan’r (串 Barbecue)
D: Depression
E: Explore Beijing Through Photos
F: Fake in China