a border checkpoint made of code, deciding which internet you get to have.
means the combined system of laws, censorship, and network filtering china uses to control what its citizens can access and say online.
from named as a pun on the great wall, coined in a 1997 wired article; built out from the golden shield project china's government launched in 1998 to modernize domestic surveillance and later extended to international traffic.
weibo censorship — posts about tiananmen or xi jinping vanish within minutes
vpn crackdown 2017 — apple pulled vpn apps from china's app store on state orders
covid lockdown posts — 2022 shanghai lockdown complaints scrubbed almost as fast as they spread
golden shield project — 1998 state initiative that seeded the entire filtering system