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90-645: Besides censorship, the Great Firewall has also influenced the development of China's internal internet economy by giving preference to domestic companies and reducing the effectiveness of products from foreign internet companies. The techniques deployed by the Chinese government to maintain control of the Great Firewall can include modifying search results for terms, such as they did following Ai Weiwei ’s arrest, and petitioning global conglomerates to remove content, as happened when they petitioned Apple to remove

180-590: A governor . The People's Government is answerable to both the State Council and the Provincial People's Congress. The provincial branch of the CCP has a Provincial Party Congress every five years, and elects a Standing Committee to exercise its authority when not in session. The Provincial Party Secretary is the de facto most important position in the province. The first provinces were created in

270-866: A root name server run by Netnod in China started returning poisoned DNS results to global users, preventing users in Chile and the U.S. from accessing sites such as Facebook. The server was shut down to stop the poisoning. In 2014, two-thirds of China's DNS infrastructure began resolving unrelated domains to 65.49.2.178, an address owned by the US-based Dynamic Internet Technology, Inc. , resulting in widespread internet outage in China . No damage to DIT services were reported despite what amounts to an accidental DDoS . While some sources attribute this incident to GFW's DNS poisoning, others (mostly quoting Chinese sources) speculate this incident

360-475: A "deviant and a plagiarist" in early 2011. Michael Sheridan of The Australian suggested that Ai had offered himself to the authorities on a platter with some of his provocative art, particularly photographs of himself nude with only a toy alpaca hiding his modesty – with a caption『草泥马挡中央』 (" grass mud horse covering the middle"). The term possesses a double meaning in Chinese: one possible interpretation

450-874: A 20 September 2000 document from the Chinese State Council , posted by the Xinhua News Agency, lists 9 categories of information which should be censored , blocked, or filtered from access to the citizens using the internet within China: To filter this content, the Chinese government not only uses its own blocking methods, but also heavily relies on internet companies, such as ISPs, social media operators such as Weibo, and others to actively censor their users. This results in private companies censoring their own platform for filtered content, forcing Chinese internet users to use websites not hosted in China to access this information. Much of this information

540-411: A Chinese poet in exile drafted and also signed the open letter. On 16 May 2011, the Chinese authorities allowed Ai's wife to visit him briefly. Liu Xiaoyuan, his attorney and personal friend, reported that Wei was in good physical condition and receiving treatment for his chronic diabetes and hypertension ; he was not in a prison or hospital but under some form of house arrest. He is the subject of

630-568: A VPN request is issued by a legitimate Chinese VPN client and passes outbound though the Great Firewall to a hidden VPN IP, the Great Firewall may detect the activity and issue its own active probe to verify the nature of the previously unknown VPN IP and, if the probe confirms the IP is part of a blacklisted VPN, blacklist the IP. This attack can be circumvented with the Obfs4 protocol, which relies on an out-of-band shared secret . The Great Firewall scrapes

720-733: A base in Cambridge, where his son attends school, and a studio in Berlin. Ai says he will stay in Portugal long-term "unless something happens". Ai sits on the Board of Advisors for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK). Ai is married to artist Lu Qing . He has a son, Ai Lao, born 2009 with Wang Fen. Ai is fond of cats. In 2005, Ai was invited to start blogging by Sina Weibo ,

810-551: A company Ai controlled, had allegedly evaded taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents. State media also reports that Ai was granted bail on account of Ai's "good attitude in confessing his crimes", willingness to pay back taxes, and his chronic illnesses. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, he was prohibited from leaving Beijing without permission for one year. Ai's supporters widely viewed his detention as retaliation for his vocal criticism of

900-465: A few hours). An efficient circumvention method is to ignore the reset packet sent by the firewall. A patch for FreeBSD has been developed for this purpose. Multiple TLS incidents have occurred within the last decade, before the creation of the law. On 26 January 2013, the GitHub SSL certificate was replaced with a self-signed certificate in China. On 20 October 2014, the iCloud SSL certificate

990-497: A four-day inaugural "Comprehensive Exhibition on Chinese Information System". At the exhibition, many western high-tech products, including Internet security , video monitoring and human face recognition were purchased. It is estimated that around 30,000–50,000 police were employed in this gigantic project. Fang Binxing is known for his substantial contribution to China's Internet censorship infrastructure , and has been dubbed "Father of China's Great Fire Wall". China's view of

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1080-912: A joint communiqué with Xi Jinping on information space, followed by Russia's National Forum for Information Security in October hosted by Fang Binxing , the architect of the Chinese Great Firewall. Ai Weiwei Hong Kong (pro-democracy) Hong Kong (centrist) Hong Kong (pro-ROC) Hong Kong (localist) Macau Republic of China (Taiwan) (groups of pro-Chinese identity) Hong Kong (pro-democracy) Hong Kong (pro-ROC) Hong Kong (localist) Republic of China (Taiwan) (groups of pro-Chinese identity) Current Former Ai Weiwei ( / ˈ aɪ w eɪ ˈ w eɪ / EYE way- WAY ; Chinese : 艾未未 ; pinyin : Ài Wèiwèi , IPA: [âɪ wêɪ.wêɪ] ; born 28 August 1957)

1170-529: A large, up-to-date banned network list with dynamic IPs (and as this method has proven incompatible with services using content delivery networks ) it is usually used as a last resort, with other blocking methods preferred (such as filtering based on QoS ). Contrary to popular belief, foreign DNS resolvers such as Google Public DNS IP address 8.8.8.8 are reported to work correctly inside the country; however, these DNS servers are also subject to hijacking as their connections are not encrypted: DNS queries do reach

1260-417: A law that deals with cyber crimes, which it divided into two broad categories: crimes that target computer networks, and crimes carried out over computer networks. Behavior illegal under the latter category includes, among many things, the dissemination of pornographic material, and the usurping of " state secrets ." Some Chinese judges were critical of CL97, calling it ineffective and unenforceable. However,

1350-417: A personal computer, are regulated by the Chinese government and by local Chinese government officials. Minors (in China, those under the age of 18) are not allowed into Internet cafés, although this law is widely ignored, and when enforced, has spurred the creation of underground "Black Web Bars" visited by those underage. As of 2008, internet cafés were required to register every customer in a log when they used

1440-483: A powerful new network that CCP elites might not be able to control. The CDP was immediately banned, followed by arrests and imprisonment. That same year, the GFW project was started. The first part of the project lasted eight years and was completed in 2006. The second part began in 2006 and ended in 2008. On 6 December 2002, 300 people in charge of the GFW project from 31 provinces and cities throughout China participated in

1530-713: A retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing). From 1981 to 1993, he lived in the United States. He was among the first generation of students to study abroad following China's reform in 1980, being one of the 161 students to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) in 1981. For the first few years, Ai lived in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He studied English at

1620-466: A top tier professional blackjack player according to an article published on blackjackchamp.com. In 1993, Ai returned to China after his father became ill. He helped establish the experimental artists' Beijing East Village and co-published a series of three books about this new generation of artists with Chinese curator Feng Boyi: Black Cover Book (1994), White Cover Book (1995), and Gray Cover Book (1997). In 1999, Ai moved to Caochangdi , in

1710-528: Is a Chinese contemporary artist , documentarian , and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile . As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government 's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following

1800-519: Is a combination of the word firewall with the Great Wall of China . The phrase "Great Firewall of China" was first used in print by Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé in 1997. A favorite saying of Deng Xiaoping 's in the early 1980s, "If you open the window, both fresh air and flies will be blown in", is considered to be the political and ideological basis of the GFW Project. The saying

1890-583: Is keyword-based. Encrypting the Server Name Indication (Encrypted Client Hello or ECH) can be used to bypass this method of filtering. It is currently in development by the IETF , and is enabled by default for supported websites in Firefox and Chromium ( Google Chrome , Microsoft Edge , Samsung Internet , and Opera ). It is believed that the analytics system is using side-channel (such as

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1980-604: Is often, which makes me realize that jasmine is what scares them the most. What a jasmine!" Analysts and other activists said Ai had been widely thought to be untouchable, but Nicholas Bequelin from Human Rights Watch suggested that his arrest was calculated to send a message that no one is immune and that the arrest must have had the approval of someone in the top leadership. International governments, human rights groups and art institutions, among others, called for Ai's release, while Chinese officials did not notify Ai's family of his whereabouts. State media started describing Ai as

2070-646: Is related to a period of the economic reform of China that became known as the " socialist market economy ". Superseding the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution , the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, despite the economic freedom, values and political ideas of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have had to be protected by "swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies. The internet in China arrived in 1994, as

2160-471: Is related to sensitive topics. The Great Firewall's goal is perceived by the Chinese Communist Party as helping to protect the Chinese population by preventing users from accessing these foreign websites which, in their opinion, host content which would be 'spiritual pollution', as well as information about these sensitive topics. These topics include: A 2020 study found that the Great Firewall blocks approximately 311,000 domains. The Cybersecurity Law behind

2250-433: Is to selectively prevent content from being accessed. It is mostly made of Cisco, Huawei, and Semptian hardware. Not all sensitive content gets blocked; in 2007, scholar Jedidiah R. Crandall and others argued that the main purpose is not to block 100%, but rather to flag and to warn, in order to encourage self-censorship. An illustrative but incomplete list of tactics includes: Because of the complexity involved in maintaining

2340-584: Is used as justification for the Great Firewall, and can be cited when the government blocks any ISP, gateway connections, or any access to anything on the internet. The definition also includes using the internet to distribute information considered "harmful to national security," and using the internet to distribute information considered "harmful to public order, social stability, and Chinese morality." The central government relies heavily on its State Council regulators to determine what specific online behavior and speech fall under these definitions. The reasons behind

2430-800: The Quartz business news publication’s app from its Chinese App Store after reporting on the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests . The Great Firewall was formerly operated by the SIIO , as part of the Golden Shield Project . Since 2013, the firewall is technically operated by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is the entity in charge of translating the Chinese Communist Party 's ideology and policy into technical specifications. As mentioned in

2520-438: The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to fellow dissident Liu Xiaobo . Ai said that he was never invited to the ceremony and was attempting to travel to South Korea where he had an important meeting when he was told that he could not leave for reasons of national security. On 11 January 2011, Ai's studio was knocked down and destroyed in a surprise move by the government, who had previously told him the studio would be destroyed only after

2610-471: The Beijing Film Academy and studied animation. In 1978, he was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the " Stars ", together with Ma Desheng , Wang Keping , Mao Lizi , Huang Rui , Li Shuang , Ah Cheng and Qu Leilei . The group disbanded in 1983, yet Ai participated in regular Stars group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong Kong and Taipei), and

2700-483: The CAC is also using active probing in order to identify and block network services that would help escaping the firewall. Multiple services such as Tor or VPN providers reported receiving unsolicited TCP/IP connections shortly after legitimate use, for the purported purpose of network enumeration of services, in particular TLS / SSL and Tor services, with the aim of facilitating IP blocking. For example, shortly after

2790-573: The International Council of Museums , which organised petitions, said they had collected more than 90,000 signatures calling for the release of Ai. On 13 April 2011, a group of European intellectuals led by Václav Havel had issued an open letter to Wen Jiabao , condemning the arrest and demanding the immediate release of Ai. The signatories include Ivan Klíma , Jiří Gruša , Jáchym Topol , Elfriede Jelinek , Adam Michnik , Adam Zagajewski , Helmuth Frauendorfer; Bei Ling (Chinese:贝岭),

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2880-498: The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego organized a 24-hour silent protest in which volunteer participants, including community members, media, and museum staff, occupied two traditionally styled Chinese chairs for one-hour periods. The 24-hour sit-in referenced Ai's sculpture series Marble Chair , two of which were on view and were subsequently acquired for the museum's permanent collection. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and

2970-847: The Public Security Bureau (PSB). The main operating procedures of the gatekeepers at the Golden Shield Project include monitoring domestic websites, email, and searching for politically sensitive language and calls to protest. When damaging content is found, local PSB officials can be dispatched to investigate or make arrests. However, by late 2007, the Golden Shield Project proved to operate sporadically at best, as users had long adapted to internet blocking by using proxy servers, among other strategies, to make communications and circumnavigate to blocked content. Internet cafés , an extremely popular way of getting online in developing countries and where fewer people can afford

3060-652: The United Kingdom . Ai's father was the Chinese poet Ai Qing , who was denounced during the Anti-Rightist Movement . In 1958, the family was sent to a labour camp in Beidahuang, Heilongjiang , when Ai was one year old. They were subsequently exiled to Shihezi , Xinjiang in 1961, where they lived for 16 years. Upon Mao Zedong 's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution , the family returned to Beijing in 1976. In 1978, Ai enrolled in

3150-647: The University of Pennsylvania and the Berkeley Adult School . Later, he moved to New York City. He studied briefly at Parsons School of Design . Ai attended the Art Students League of New York from 1983 to 1986, where he studied with Bruce Dorfman, Knox Martin and Richard Pousette-Dart . He later dropped out of school and made a living out of drawing street portraits and working odd jobs. During this period, he gained exposure to

3240-748: The Yuan dynasty , and have remained one of the most stable forms of Chinese government since then. They were created to help the Imperial court manage local county governments, which were too numerous and far-flung to be managed directly. The number of provinces grew steadily during subsequent dynasties, reaching 28 by the time of the Republic of China . During the Warlord Era , provinces became largely or completely autonomous and exercised significant national influence. Province-level units proliferated and under

3330-557: The " one country, two systems " principle, China's special administrative regions (SARs) such as Hong Kong and Macau are not affected by the firewall, as SARs have their own governmental and legal systems and therefore enjoy a higher degree of autonomy. Nevertheless, the U.S. State Department has reported that the central government authorities have closely monitored Internet use in these regions, and Hong Kong's National Security Law has been used to block websites documenting anti-government protests . The term Great Firewall of China

3420-688: The 2012 documentary film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry , directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman, which received a special jury prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and opened the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival , North America's largest documentary festival, in Toronto on 26 April 2012. On 22 June 2011, the Chinese authorities released Ai from jail after almost three months' detention on charges of tax evasion. Beijing Fa Ke Cultural Development Ltd. ( Chinese : 北京发课文化公司 ),

3510-477: The 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province on 12 May 2008, Ai led a team to survey and film the post-quake conditions in various disaster zones. In response to the government's lack of transparency in revealing names of students who perished in the earthquake due to substandard school campus constructions, Ai recruited volunteers online and launched a "Citizens' Investigation" to compile names and information of

3600-539: The Beijing Chaoyang district tax bureau, where she was interrogated about his studio's tax on 12 April. South China Morning Post reports that Ai received at least two visits from the police, the last being on 31 March—three days before his detention—apparently with offers of membership to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference . A staff member recalled that Ai had mentioned receiving

3690-486: The Chinese Communist Party, or one's home and private spaces, reducing the chance for information about these topics to spread, reducing any threat of protest against the CCP. According to Yaqiu Wang , a prominent human rights researcher, there was a time in China where the internet provided a method for Chinese citizens to learn about the sensitive topics the government had censored in the news, through access to international news reports and media coverage. She claims that, in

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3780-509: The Chinese regime was hellish (Chinese: 九死一生), and stressed that he is forbidden to say too much to reporters. After his release, his sister gave some details about his detention condition to the press, explaining that he was subjected to a kind of psychological torture: he was detained in a tiny room with constant light, and two guards were set very close to him at all times, and watched him constantly. In November, Chinese authorities were again investigating Ai and his associates, this time under

3870-574: The Constitutions of the People's Republic states that "citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech , of the press , of assembly , of association, of procession, and of demonstration." In recent decades, many criticisms of the Chinese government found that some of these laws are often abused. A study by PEN America claimed that "Some of the government's most rights-abusive laws are aimed at criminalizing free speech that — in

3960-581: The DNS server, but if the request matches a banned keyword, the firewall will inject a fake DNS reply before the legitimate DNS reply arrives. The vast majority of these fake responses contain public IP addresses of U.S. companies, including Facebook, Twitter, and Dropbox. Typical circumvention methods include modifying the Hosts file , typing the IP address instead of the domain name in a Web browser or using DNS over TLS / HTTPS . Like for DNS filtering, this method

4050-500: The IPs of Tor and VPN servers from the official distribution channels, and enumerates them. The strategy to resist this attack is to limit the quantity of proxy IPs revealed to each user and making it very difficult for users to create more than one identity. Academics have proposed solutions such as Salmon, a volunteer-based proxy network designed to combat censorship. Dynamic IPs are quite effective to flush out from blacklists. Article 15 of

4140-480: The Internet censorship in China include: As part of the Great Firewall, beginning in 2003, China started the Golden Shield Project , a massive surveillance and censoring system, the hardware for which was provided by mostly U.S. companies, including Cisco Systems . The project was completed in 2006, and is now carried out in buildings with machines manned by civilians and supervised by China's national police force,

4230-498: The Internet is one of " Internet sovereignty ": the notion that the Internet inside the country is part of the country's sovereignty and should be governed by the country. While the United States and several other western countries passed laws creating computer crimes beginning in the 1970s, China had no such legislation until 1997. That year, China's sole legislative body – the National People's Congress (NPC) – passed CL97,

4320-476: The Internet to: harm national security; disclose state secrets; or injure the interests of the state or society. Users are prohibited from using the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit information that incites resistance to the PRC Constitution , laws, or administrative regulations; promoting the overthrow of the government or socialist system; undermining national unification; distorting

4410-719: The NPC claimed that it intentionally left the law "flexible" so that it could be open to future interpretation and development. Given the gaps in the law, the central government of China relies heavily on its administrative body, the State Council , to determine what falls under the definitions, and their determinations are not required to go through the NPC legislative process. As a result, the Chinese Communist Party has ended up relying heavily on state regulation to carry out CL97. The latter definition of online activities punishable under CL97, or "crimes carried out over computer networks",

4500-431: The account @aiww. As of 31 December 2013, Ai has declared that he would stop tweeting but the account remains active in forms of retweets and Instagram posts. In 2013, Dale Eisinger of Complex ranked Ai's blog as the fourth greatest work of performance art ever, with the writer arguing, "Much in the way early performance artists documented with film and video, Ai used the prevalent medium of his time—the web—to examine

4590-557: The beginning of the New Year on 3 February 2011. On 3 April 2011, Ai was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport just before catching a flight to Hong Kong and his studio facilities were searched. A police contingent of approximately 50 officers came to his studio, threw a cordon around it and searched the premises. They took away laptops and the hard drive from the main computer; along with Ai, police also detained eight staff members and Ai's wife, Lu Qing. Police also visited

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4680-465: The biggest internet platform in China. He posted his first blog on 19 November. For four years, he "turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary, criticism of government policy, thoughts on art and architecture, and autobiographical writings." The blog was shut down by Sina on 28 May 2009. Ai then turned to Twitter and wrote prolifically on the platform, claiming at least eight hours online every day. He wrote almost exclusively in Chinese using

4770-592: The charge of spreading pornography. Lu was subsequently questioned by police, and released after several hours though the exact charges remain unclear. In January 2012, in its International Review issue Art in America magazine featured an interview with Ai Weiwei at his home in China. J.J. Camille (the pen name of a Chinese-born writer living in New York), "neither a journalist nor an activist but simply an art lover who wanted to talk to him" had travelled to Beijing

4860-487: The circumvention software turned on, yet not proxy unblocked content, and the software itself never directly connects to a central server. Side channel analysis seems to indicate that TCP Resets are coming from an infrastructure co-located or shared with QoS filtering routers. This infrastructure seems to update the scoring system: if a previous TCP connection is blocked by the filter, future connection attempts from both sides may also be blocked for short periods of time (up to

4950-638: The collapse of " tofu-dreg schools " in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake . In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport for "economic crimes," and detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators. Ai Weiwei encapsulates political conviction and poetry in his many sculptures, photographs, and public works. Since being allowed to leave China in 2015, he has lived in Portugal , Germany , and

5040-513: The collected names as well as numerous articles documenting the investigation on his blog which was shut down by Chinese authorities in May 2009. He also posted his list of names of schoolchildren who died on the wall of his office at FAKE Design in Beijing. Ai suffered headaches and claimed he had difficulty concentrating on his work since returning from Chengdu in August 2009, where he was beaten by

5130-455: The country, two accounts used by him had been hacked in a sophisticated attack on Google in China dubbed Operation Aurora , their contents read and copied; his bank accounts were investigated by state security agents who claimed he was under investigation for "unspecified suspected crimes". Ai was placed under house arrest in November 2010 by the Chinese police. He said this was to prevent

5220-481: The end of the term, the gathering took place without Ai. All of his fans had a river crab , an allusion to "harmony", and a euphemism used to jeer official censorship. Ai was eventually released from house arrest the next day. Like other activists and intellectuals, Ai was stopped from leaving China in late 2010. Ai suggested that the higher ups wanted to stop him from attending a ceremony in December 2010 to award

5310-428: The executive, a Provincial People's Congress with legislative powers, and a parallel provincial branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that elects a Party Secretary and a Provincial Standing Committee . Provinces are the most common form of province-level governments. The legislative bodies of the provinces are the Provincial People's Congresses. The executive branch is the Provincial People's Government, led by

5400-453: The eyes of the government — encourages subversion, separatism, or rejection of the State’s authority." Censorship of sensitive topics in China has also been easier for the government because of the firewall and its filtering. Because the monitoring of social media and chat apps in China presents a possibility of punishment for a user, the discussion of these topics is now limited to the thought of

5490-689: The firewall is targeted at helping increase internet user privacy, increase protections on personal data, and making companies more responsible for monitoring bad actors, in hopes to make the Internet a safer place for Chinese citizens. Despite this, there have been growing criticisms that the actions of the Chinese government have only hurt Chinese free speech, due to increased censorship, and lack of non-sanctioned sources of information, such as Misplaced Pages and many English news sources. This has resulted in reports of some cases of legal persecution of those charged with spreading this information. The Chinese government itself does legally support free speech; article 35 of

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5580-598: The global internet population (700 million users), the internet behind the GFW can be considered a "parallel universe" to the Internet that exists outside. While the Great Firewall has had an impact on Chinese citizens' ability to use the internet to find information about sensitive topics about the Chinese Communist Party, it has not completely stopped them from doing so. The firewall itself has caused much frustration amongst both individuals and internationally operating companies in China, many of whom have turned to VPNs, speaking in codes, and other methods to retain their access to

5670-444: The government. On 23 June 2011, professor Wang Yujin of China University of Political Science and Law stated that the release of Ai on bail shows that the Chinese government could not find any solid evidence of Ai's alleged "economic crime". On 24 June 2011, Ai told a Radio Free Asia reporter that he was thankful for the support of the Hong Kong public, and praised Hong Kong's conscious society. Ai also mentioned that his detention by

5760-448: The handshake headers, and packet sizes) to estimate how suspicious a connection is. It is able to detect traffic protocols (such as SSH tunneling, VPN or Tor protocols), and can measure the entropy of packets to detect encrypted-over-encrypted traffic (such as HTTPS over an SSL tunnel). This attack may be resisted by using a pluggable transport in order to mimic 'innocent' traffic, and never connect to 'suspicious' IPs by always having

5850-414: The increasingly fine line between public life and the artist's work. Ai here used his presence to create something full and tangible rather than just a symbolic representation of his critique." In 2023, he created a mobile app to which gives users a picture of Ai's own middle finger which they can insert over another image of any place on earth (from google earth) which they disapprove of. Ten days after

5940-458: The inevitable consequence of and supporting tool for a "socialist market economy". Gradually, while Internet availability has been increasing, the Internet has become a common communication platform and tool for trading information. The Ministry of Public Security took initial steps to control Internet use in 1997, when it issued comprehensive regulations governing its use. The key sections, Articles 4–6, are: Individuals are prohibited from using

6030-864: The international internet. Because the Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain names and inspects the data being sent or received, a basic censorship circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Bypassing the firewall is known as fānqiáng (翻墙, "climb over the wall"), and most circumvention tools combine these two mechanisms: In 2017, the Chinese government declared unauthorized VPN services illegal, requiring VPN providers to obtain state approval. Although China restricts VPNs, they remain widely used by private individuals. State-owned enterprises or state institutions also use VPNs for official work. The Chinese government has authorized several official VPN providers. Those who develop or sell their own VPNs potentially face years in prison. Non-proxy circumvention strategies include: In 2010,

6120-456: The internet there. These records may be confiscated by either local government officials or the PSB. To illustrate local regulation of internet cafés, in one instance, a government official in the town of Gedong lawfully banned internet cafés from operating in the town because he believed them to be harmful to minors, who frequented them to play online games (including those considered violent) and surf

6210-493: The internet. However, internet cafés in this town simply went underground, and most minors were not deterred from visiting them. In May 2015, China indefinitely blocked access to the Chinese-language Misplaced Pages. In 2017, China discussed plans for its own version of Misplaced Pages. As of May 2019, all language versions of Misplaced Pages have been blocked by the Chinese government. One function of the Chinese firewall

6300-512: The most numerous type of province-level divisions in the People's Republic of China (PRC). There are currently 22 provinces administered by the PRC and one province that is claimed, but not administered, which is Taiwan , currently administered by the Republic of China (ROC). The local governments of Chinese provinces consists of a Provincial People's Government headed by a governor that acts as

6390-413: The mother of Ai's two-year-old son. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on 7 April that Ai was arrested under investigation for alleged economic crimes. Then, on 8 April, police returned to Ai's workshop to examine his financial affairs. Ai's assistant Wen Tao, studio partner Liu Zhenggang and driver Zhang Jingsong were also detained following Ai's arrest. Ai's wife said that she was summoned by

6480-634: The newly completed studio would be knocked down because it was illegal and did not meet the needs. Ai criticized that this was biased, stating that he was "the only one singled out to have my studio destroyed". The Guardian reported Ai saying Shanghai municipal authorities were "upset " by documentaries on subjects they considered delicate—in particular a documentary featuring Shanghai resident Feng Zhenghu , who lived in forced separation for three months in Narita Airport, Tokyo, and one focused on Yang Jia , who murdered six Shanghai police officers. At

6570-533: The northeast of Beijing, and built a studio house—his first architectural project. Due to his interest in architecture, he founded the architecture studio FAKE Design, in 2003. In 2000, he co-curated the art exhibition Fuck Off with curator Feng Boyi in Shanghai, China. In 2011, Ai was arrested in China on charges of tax evasion, jailed for 81 days, and then released. The government had confiscated his passport and refused him any other travel papers. Following

6660-497: The offer earlier, "[but Ai] didn't say if it was a membership of the CPPCC at the municipal or national level, how he responded or whether he accepted it or not." On 24 February, amid an online campaign for Middle East-style protests in major Chinese cities by overseas dissidents, Ai posted on his Twitter account: "I didn't care about jasmine at first, but people who are scared by jasmine sent out information about how harmful jasmine

6750-636: The past 10 years, it has been increasingly difficult to access second opinions on events, meaning that students rarely have the opportunity to learn diverging viewpoints — only the "correct" thought of the CCP. The Great Firewall has also allowed China to develop its own major internet services, such as Tencent , Alibaba , Baidu , Renren , Youku , and Weibo . China has its own version of many foreign web properties, for example: Bilibili and Tencent Video (YouTube), Weibo (Twitter), Moments and Qzone (Facebook), WeChat (WhatsApp), Ctrip (Orbitz and others), and Zhihu ( Quora ). With nearly one quarter of

6840-401: The planned party marking the demolition of his brand new Shanghai studio. The building was designed by Ai himself with assistance, and potency coming from a "high official [from Shanghai]" the new studio was a part of a new traditionally design by Shanghai Municipal jurisdiction. He was going to use it as a studio and mentor different architecture courses. After Ai was charged with constructing

6930-568: The police for trying to testify for Tan Zuoren , a fellow investigator of the shoddy construction and student casualties in the earthquake. On 14 September 2009, Ai was diagnosed to be suffering internal bleeding in a hospital in Munich, Germany, and the doctor arranged for emergency brain surgery. The cerebral hemorrhage is believed to be linked to the police attack. According to the Financial Times , in an attempt to force Ai to leave

7020-566: The previous September to conduct the interview and to write about his visit to "China's most famous dissident artist" for the magazine. On 21 June 2012, Ai's bail was lifted. Although he was allowed to leave Beijing, the police informed him that he was still prohibited from traveling to other countries because he is "suspected of other crimes", including pornography, bigamy and illicit exchange of foreign currency. Until 2015, he remained under heavy surveillance and restrictions of movement, but continued to criticize through his work. In July 2015, he

7110-460: The release of Ai: "1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei" was organized by Creative Time of New York that calls for artists to bring chairs to Chinese embassies and consulates around the world on 17 April 2011, at 1 pm local time "to sit peacefully in support of the artist's immediate release." Artists in Hong Kong, Germany and Taiwan demonstrated and called for Ai to be released. One of the major protests by U.S. museums took place on 19 and 20 May when

7200-540: The return of his passport in 2015, Ai moved to Berlin where he maintained a large studio in a former brewery. He lived in the studio and used it as the base for his international work. In 2019, he announced he would be leaving Berlin, saying that Germany is not an open culture. In September 2019, he moved to live in Cambridge , England. As of 2023, Ai lives in Montemor-o-Novo , Portugal . He still maintains

7290-427: The student victims. On 20 March 2009, he posted a blog titled "Citizens' Investigation" and wrote: "To remember the departed, to show concern for life, to take responsibility, and for the potential happiness of the survivors, we are initiating a 'Citizens' Investigation.' We will seek out the names of each departed child, and we will remember them." As of 14 April 2009, the list had accumulated 5,385 names. Ai published

7380-463: The studio without the required approval and the knockdown notice had been processed, Ai said officials had been anxious and the paperwork and planning process was "under government supervision". According to Ai, a few different artists were invited to create and structure new studios in this area of Shanghai because officials wanted to create a friendly environment. Ai stated on 3 November 2010 that authorities had let him know him two months earlier that

7470-495: The truth, spreading rumors, or destroying social order; or providing sexually suggestive material or encouraging gambling, violence, or murder. Users are prohibited from engaging in activities that harm the security of computer information networks and from using networks or changing network resources without prior approval. In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party feared that the China Democracy Party (CDP) would breed

7560-499: The works of Marcel Duchamp , Andy Warhol , and Jasper Johns , and began creating conceptual art by altering readymade objects. Ai befriended beat poet Allen Ginsberg while living in New York, following a chance meeting at a poetry reading where Ginsberg read out several poems about China. Ginsberg had traveled to China and met with Ai's father, the noted poet Ai Qing , and consequently Ginsberg and Ai became friends. When he

7650-1095: Was given a passport and permitted to travel abroad. Province (China) Provinces Autonomous regions Sub-provincial autonomous prefectures Autonomous prefectures Leagues (Aimag) (abolishing) Prefectures Provincial-controlled cities Provincial-controlled counties Autonomous counties County-level cities Districts Ethnic districts Banners (Hoxu) Autonomous banners Shennongjia Forestry District Liuzhi Special District Wolong Special Administrative Region Workers and peasants districts Ethnic townships Towns Subdistricts Subdistrict bureaux Sum Ethnic sum County-controlled districts County-controlled district bureaux (obsolete) Management committees Town-level city Areas Villages · Gaqa · Ranches Village Committees Communities Capital cities New areas Autonomous administrative divisions National Central Cities History: before 1912 , 1912–49 , 1949–present Provinces ( Chinese : 省 ; pinyin : Shěng ) are

7740-409: Was given by Sheridan as: "Fuck your mother, the party central committee". Ming Pao in Hong Kong reacted strongly to the state media's character attack on Ai, saying that authorities had employed "a chain of actions outside the law, doing further damage to an already weak system of laws, and to the overall image of the country." Pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong, Wen Wei Po , announced that Ai

7830-539: Was living in the East Village (from 1983 to 1993), Ai carried a camera with him all the time and would take pictures of his surroundings wherever he was. The resulting collection of photos were later selected and is now known as the New York Photographs. At the same time, Ai became fascinated by blackjack card games and frequented Atlantic City casinos. He is still regarded in gambling circles as

7920-839: Was replaced with a self-signed certificate in China. It is believed that the Chinese government discovered a vulnerability on Apple devices and was exploiting it. On 20 March 2015, Google detected valid certificates for Google signed by CNNIC in Egypt. In response to this event, and after a deeper investigation, the CNNIC certificate was removed by some browsers. Due to the removal being based on proof and not suspicion, no other Chinese certificate authority has been removed from web browsers, and some have been added since then. This type of attack can be circumvented by websites implementing Certificate Transparency and OCSP stapling or by using browser extensions. In addition to previously discussed techniques,

8010-647: Was somehow caused by DIT themselves. Reporters Without Borders suspects that countries such as Cuba , Iran , Vietnam , Zimbabwe , and Belarus have obtained surveillance technology from China, although the censorship in these countries is less stringent than in China. Since at least 2015, the Russian Roskomnadzor agency collaborates with Chinese Great Firewall security officials in implementing its data retention and filtering infrastructure. During his visit to Beijing in June 2016, Vladimir Putin signed

8100-435: Was under arrest for tax evasion, bigamy and spreading indecent images on the internet, and vilified him with multiple instances of strong rhetoric. Supporters said, "the article should be seen as a mainland media commentary attacking Ai, rather than as an accurate account of the investigation." The United States and European Union protested Ai's detention. The international arts community also mobilised petitions calling for

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