Great Chinese Golden Shield

Our customer service representatives constantly receive the same question: “Why is my site / server not accessible from China?”.
The answer is simple: it is blocked by the Chinese Great Firewall.
In this series of posts, we will shed light on issues that surround one very painful and controversial topic - The Great Firewall of China (in particular) and censorship (in general). Of course, all your questions and entries in the topic can be made at any time.
For a start, a little history.

What is the Golden Shield Project?

In 1998, the Ministry of Public Security of China launched a project called the Golden Shield Project. In the media, he is better known as The Great Firewall of China (pun, meaning as a network firewall, and the ancient Great Wall of China). Its main purpose is to censor and control all online activities both in China and beyond.

The main step was the creation of the National Crime Information Center (1994), which later became part of the monitoring project of the Golden Shield Project. In 1998, the government stated that in order to gain access to the Internet of the entire nation, certain changes must be implemented. Later that year, the Minister of Public Security presented a document stating that the Chinese Communist Party should be able to control the information that the public receives. After in-depth research and a series of meetings with the public security authorities, the Minister of Public Security decided to implement a project aimed at ensuring the public safety of information technologies. The project was given the name “Golden Shield Project”.
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In subsequent years, the project was carefully prepared and in 2001 was approved by the State Council. It was presented as part of the “construction projects” planned by the country, the purpose of which was to create a communication network and a computer information system for police structures, with the aim of expanding their capabilities and improving work efficiency. After the National Assembly in Beijing in September 2003, the project began its work. Having been approved by the national inspectorates, the project was institutionalized in November 2006.

According to the official legislation for this project, websites based in China cannot link to and publish news taken from foreign news sites or media without special approval. There is a list of media sites “licensed print publishers” that have permission to publish news on the Internet. All other websites can only provide information that has already been made public by authorized media. They must also receive approval from the State Council Information Agency and are responsible for the legality of the information broadcast. Each Internet service provider of information services “must keep copies of records for 60 days” and be ready to provide this information to public authorities upon request. Providers are also required to limit the information they publish. Failure to comply with any of the above requirements results in the website being blocked. How this blocking is carried out we will discuss in the next article.

How to check?

You can always go to Check through Test Tools and test access to the site from 3 locations or from browser add-ons that you can find here .

The second part of