Chinese Internet: like a stone wall
The Internet in China is controversial, surrounded by myths and has not been fully studied by the West. The Chinese Internet, or Sinet, can only be compared with a UFO: everyone knows about it, but few have seen it live.
Myths about blue
Most Internet residents of the planet Earth believe that the Chinese Internet is a stronghold of network censorship. Not only do they block websites that are disagreeable to the government, they also catch bloggers, Internet dissidents, Tibetan lamas and sectarians of Falun Gong, beat them with kidneys and put them in secret prisons, periodically shooting them for prevention. We can add to this a high level of piracy and a huge amount of spam sent to our poor heads.
')
What else do we “know” about Cinet? There is the largest number of Internet users in the world (more than 221 million people), and every fourth of them keeps a blog. Oh, yes, of course, all Chinese users write under their own names, and if someone uses a pseudonym, then the “Omon” outfit will immediately be sent in his direction.
Undoubtedly, all Chinese use one search engine - Baidu.com. And if some scoundrel tries another search engine (for example, Google), it will still be transferred to Baidu. To heaps, “Yandex” is also blocked here so as not to relax.
On this list of stereotypes about the Chinese Internet, I want to finish, but you can continue it at your leisure.
How did it begin
China has always sought to be a world leader, to become a “nation of the XXI century”, to catch up and overtake the elder brother of the USSR and the capitalist enemy - the United States. Developing a promising Internet is a natural step on the path to “winning” the primacy of the world.
The historic opening date of the Chinese Internet is September 20, 1987, when Professor Qian Tianbai from the Beijing Computer Research Institute, in the framework of the CANET project (Chinese Academic Network) sent the first email from China. Then spam was not caught (now they are extremely suspicious of letters from Chinese IP) and the message was delivered to the addressee, it read: “Through the Great Wall - access to the world”.
The irony of fate - now the Great Wall of China, or the Great Chinese Firewall (Great Firewall of China) is not associated with "access to the world", but on the contrary, with Internet censorship.
With the assistance of educational institutions of Germany and Canada, the Chinese Internet has been developing rapidly. Already in October 1990, the Chinese .cn domain zone was registered. And in the same year, the e-mail service from this domain zone was officially opened.
Time passed, the connection speed grew, and Sinet became available not only to educational institutions, but also to civilians. By 1997, there were more than 290 thousand personal computers in China, 620 thousand Internet users, 4066 domains in the .cn zone and 1.5 thousand sites. Within two years, there were about 4 million users, 30 thousand domains and 10 thousand sites. In 2007, there were more than 5 million Chinese domains.
Great Firewall of China in Brief
Western corporations, seeing the fast-growing PRC market, rushed to collect the profits of the cream in the Internet field. The government already then saw not only the prospects, but also the potential danger of the Internet. IBM and CISCO are said to have made one deal to enter the Chinese market. This is the creation of the Great Firewall of China - a search engine and an Internet filter developed with the participation of the two companies mentioned, and partly Yahoo. And they can be understood, so they would not give them life in the huge Chinese market.
The local population only manages to shake their heads, once again bumping into a blocked page. Yes, you still need to guess that the page is locked. This is in the Middle East about the blocked sites honestly warns the opened page-stub. In the Middle Kingdom, there is no such thing. The Chinese firewall is distinguished by selectivity, surprise and cunning.
The Chinese Firewall is not only a cunning Internet filter, but also a search engine with a huge vocabulary in several languages ​​of the world (the Russian dictionary presumably consists of 1000 words and phrases). Often, the site is blocked not throughout the PRC, but gradually, which sows excitement among foreign visitors.
Ben writes to Bob: does Wikipedia open for him?
Bob replies, “Yes.”
“Strange, but I don't have,” says Ben.
If there are five people like Benov, then we can confidently say that tomorrow the news about the next blocked website in China will cover the entire Internet. Until last year, through the site GreatFirewallofChina.org it was possible to check which sites are blocked in China, but now this test is not working.
Of course, bypassing the filters is not a problem. Blueprint is overflowing with articles like “21 ways to get around GFW”, “How to open Wikipedia”, etc. Sometimes an attempt to bypass the filter is punishable. They are punishing for demonstrative purposes so that others will not be in danger.
The indigenous users have already developed a certain slang, so as not to get into the attention of Big Brother. The words “Falun Gong”, “Jiang Zemin”, “Communism”, “Tibet”, “Taiwan” in combination with the words “freedom” or “independence” are almost not used. And if applied, then the modified forms of these words.
For example, it is not customary to say “I am banned by the Chinese censorship,” they say, “I am GFWed!”. Or “I have harmonized” - the verb from “harmony”, in Chinese “he sie”; the origin of the word is connected with some report “On the Harmonious Development of the Country, the Media and the Internet”, the essence of which is in the closure of unwanted newspapers and websites.
But Big Brother also does not sleep, now he is looking for references to “harmony”, and users, meanwhile, have begun to use a Chinese homonym - the word “cancer”.
But this is the Chinese web underground, in reality everything is simpler. Every Wikipedia, Google, Flickr, Livejournal has its own "correct" replacement.
Google and Wikipedia in the furnace!
The most popular Chinese search engine "Baidu" (http://baidu.com), known to all. True, this is not just a search engine for sites, images, videos and music. It is also a separate search for people with disabilities, children, searching for documents, books, blogs, news, geographic search (addresses), searching on a hard disk, on government websites, etc.
I’ll say separately about the search for music on “Baida” - it gives out direct working links to media files. It is so good that it is already blocked in the USA. And you say - Chinese Firewall!
In addition, Baidu is a big social platform (web2.0 and all that). The following services are combined under one account:
Baidu. Space - blog and photo album;
Bidupedia - free and “correct” encyclopedia;
Baidu. Postings - numerous forums on various topics, with photo albums of participants. Anyone can create a forum;
Baidu. Bookmarks - social bookmarks on the necessary websites, search queries, etc .;
Baidu. I know - the service of questions and answers, quite popular and successful;
Baidu.Getting
Baidu.Money - payment system;
Baidu.News - news aggregator, such as Yandex.News;
Baidu. Finance and Baidu. Index - a huge number of financial services for tracking trends on the stock exchange, the index of securities;
Baidu. Downloading - own file exchange system;
Baidu. Games - multiplayer online RPG, strategy, racing;
Baidu also has its own map service - Baidu.Map. Again, "correct", without any secret military bases and submarines near Taiwan.
I'm not talking about the toolbar, internet pager, antivirus and electronic dictionary. In general, why should I “Wikipedia” or Google.Maps, when there is all his own, dear and understandable.
E-commerce empire
About Alibaba (http://www.alibaba.cn) in RuNet has been repeatedly mentioned. First of all, it is the world's largest B2B platform with its Alipay payment system (https://alipay.com) and an Internet pager. On Alibaba, there are more than one thousand companies looking for suppliers, partners and customers. But this “cinema is not for everyone”, but only for legal entities.
For all the others, there is Alibaba's daughter, Taobao (http://taobao.com). This is China's largest online store and online auction B2C / C2C. If almost no one heard about Amazon and eBay in the Celestial Empire, then an advertising series is being filmed about Taobao, where the plot of each series comes down to buying another thing in this online store. And there you can buy almost everything: from clothes, electronics and furniture to accessories of the sex industry, medicines and antiques.
Everyone can create a shop on Taobao. You can sell anything that does not violate the laws of the PRC. The site has a complex system of rating and credibility for both sellers and buyers. And the most important thing is competition. What allows you to choose on the site quality and cheap goods.
Taobao has a wild popularity in China. For example, walking through the normal market can be seen on the signs of individual shops the site of the store on Taobao and QQ-number.
Great Chinese Penguin
No, not Red Flag Linux, but the national QQ online pager (http://www.qq.com). It is also known as OICQ, Tencent Messenger. The QQ image of a penguin is so ingrained in the minds of Chinese users that the qq-number is often called “wang hao” (internet number). You may not have e-mail, but everyone should have QQ. Ancient Chinese omen says: the loss of a QQ-number is in trouble. And the next Chinese copy of Toyota was called QQ.
What can I say! - My friend was reprimanded when he did not appear at the meeting, which was reported in the QQ-group. Fortunately, in recent years, QQ has begun to be blocked in the workplace, which has enabled the development of alternative messengers.
However, this is "not just a messenger." The Chinese love everything to the maximum, so get - music, games on the web, the payment system, something like tamogochi, blogs, etc. Isn't it strange that official clients weigh from 25 to 60 megabytes. And the advertising palette finishes to the end: pop-ups, banners in messages, qq-spam.
You can guess that Big Brother is watching you here too. They also write in QQ with a special slang, when registering, they need to enter this information, up to the ID number, otherwise they can “harmonize”.
Social boom
The popularity of social networks has not bypassed the Middle Kingdom. The most famous social networks are Xiaonei (http://xiaonei.com) and Hinei (http://hainei.com). Both belong to the same owner, both are similar to Facebook and each other. Only the name distinguishes them: the first is translated as “at school”, the second is “at sea” (by the sea is meant life). Nothing like the Russian clones?
In China, they have not yet had such success as Facebook, and QQ still rules — but still ahead.
Varese - yes!
The Chinese government has stepped up the fight against piracy on the Internet. The Chinese sites that were once popular in the West, EnFull, FullDown, FixDown, are being closed down or paid, where you could download not only “cracks”, but full retail versions of paid programs.
But bt and ed2k file exchange networks are very popular and widely developed. Developments are underway on national substitutes, for example, Blin.cn (http://blin.cn), which is claimed to be 50 times faster than BitTorrent.
* * *
In conclusion, I want to say that Cinet is self-sufficient and can safely do without Western sites. YouTube alone accounts for more than 20 Chinese peers. Services similar to Last.fm have long been provided by QQ and Baidu.
In the future, when China takes over the whole world, it will be difficult for us to live without the Chinese Internet, and not him without us.
Myths about blue
Most Internet residents of the planet Earth believe that the Chinese Internet is a stronghold of network censorship. Not only do they block websites that are disagreeable to the government, they also catch bloggers, Internet dissidents, Tibetan lamas and sectarians of Falun Gong, beat them with kidneys and put them in secret prisons, periodically shooting them for prevention. We can add to this a high level of piracy and a huge amount of spam sent to our poor heads.
')
What else do we “know” about Cinet? There is the largest number of Internet users in the world (more than 221 million people), and every fourth of them keeps a blog. Oh, yes, of course, all Chinese users write under their own names, and if someone uses a pseudonym, then the “Omon” outfit will immediately be sent in his direction.
Undoubtedly, all Chinese use one search engine - Baidu.com. And if some scoundrel tries another search engine (for example, Google), it will still be transferred to Baidu. To heaps, “Yandex” is also blocked here so as not to relax.
On this list of stereotypes about the Chinese Internet, I want to finish, but you can continue it at your leisure.
How did it begin
China has always sought to be a world leader, to become a “nation of the XXI century”, to catch up and overtake the elder brother of the USSR and the capitalist enemy - the United States. Developing a promising Internet is a natural step on the path to “winning” the primacy of the world.
The historic opening date of the Chinese Internet is September 20, 1987, when Professor Qian Tianbai from the Beijing Computer Research Institute, in the framework of the CANET project (Chinese Academic Network) sent the first email from China. Then spam was not caught (now they are extremely suspicious of letters from Chinese IP) and the message was delivered to the addressee, it read: “Through the Great Wall - access to the world”.
The irony of fate - now the Great Wall of China, or the Great Chinese Firewall (Great Firewall of China) is not associated with "access to the world", but on the contrary, with Internet censorship.
With the assistance of educational institutions of Germany and Canada, the Chinese Internet has been developing rapidly. Already in October 1990, the Chinese .cn domain zone was registered. And in the same year, the e-mail service from this domain zone was officially opened.
Time passed, the connection speed grew, and Sinet became available not only to educational institutions, but also to civilians. By 1997, there were more than 290 thousand personal computers in China, 620 thousand Internet users, 4066 domains in the .cn zone and 1.5 thousand sites. Within two years, there were about 4 million users, 30 thousand domains and 10 thousand sites. In 2007, there were more than 5 million Chinese domains.
Great Firewall of China in Brief
Western corporations, seeing the fast-growing PRC market, rushed to collect the profits of the cream in the Internet field. The government already then saw not only the prospects, but also the potential danger of the Internet. IBM and CISCO are said to have made one deal to enter the Chinese market. This is the creation of the Great Firewall of China - a search engine and an Internet filter developed with the participation of the two companies mentioned, and partly Yahoo. And they can be understood, so they would not give them life in the huge Chinese market.
The local population only manages to shake their heads, once again bumping into a blocked page. Yes, you still need to guess that the page is locked. This is in the Middle East about the blocked sites honestly warns the opened page-stub. In the Middle Kingdom, there is no such thing. The Chinese firewall is distinguished by selectivity, surprise and cunning.
The Chinese Firewall is not only a cunning Internet filter, but also a search engine with a huge vocabulary in several languages ​​of the world (the Russian dictionary presumably consists of 1000 words and phrases). Often, the site is blocked not throughout the PRC, but gradually, which sows excitement among foreign visitors.
Ben writes to Bob: does Wikipedia open for him?
Bob replies, “Yes.”
“Strange, but I don't have,” says Ben.
If there are five people like Benov, then we can confidently say that tomorrow the news about the next blocked website in China will cover the entire Internet. Until last year, through the site GreatFirewallofChina.org it was possible to check which sites are blocked in China, but now this test is not working.
Of course, bypassing the filters is not a problem. Blueprint is overflowing with articles like “21 ways to get around GFW”, “How to open Wikipedia”, etc. Sometimes an attempt to bypass the filter is punishable. They are punishing for demonstrative purposes so that others will not be in danger.
The indigenous users have already developed a certain slang, so as not to get into the attention of Big Brother. The words “Falun Gong”, “Jiang Zemin”, “Communism”, “Tibet”, “Taiwan” in combination with the words “freedom” or “independence” are almost not used. And if applied, then the modified forms of these words.
For example, it is not customary to say “I am banned by the Chinese censorship,” they say, “I am GFWed!”. Or “I have harmonized” - the verb from “harmony”, in Chinese “he sie”; the origin of the word is connected with some report “On the Harmonious Development of the Country, the Media and the Internet”, the essence of which is in the closure of unwanted newspapers and websites.
But Big Brother also does not sleep, now he is looking for references to “harmony”, and users, meanwhile, have begun to use a Chinese homonym - the word “cancer”.
But this is the Chinese web underground, in reality everything is simpler. Every Wikipedia, Google, Flickr, Livejournal has its own "correct" replacement.
Google and Wikipedia in the furnace!
The most popular Chinese search engine "Baidu" (http://baidu.com), known to all. True, this is not just a search engine for sites, images, videos and music. It is also a separate search for people with disabilities, children, searching for documents, books, blogs, news, geographic search (addresses), searching on a hard disk, on government websites, etc.
I’ll say separately about the search for music on “Baida” - it gives out direct working links to media files. It is so good that it is already blocked in the USA. And you say - Chinese Firewall!
In addition, Baidu is a big social platform (web2.0 and all that). The following services are combined under one account:
Baidu. Space - blog and photo album;
Bidupedia - free and “correct” encyclopedia;
Baidu. Postings - numerous forums on various topics, with photo albums of participants. Anyone can create a forum;
Baidu. Bookmarks - social bookmarks on the necessary websites, search queries, etc .;
Baidu. I know - the service of questions and answers, quite popular and successful;
Baidu.Getting
Baidu.Money - payment system;
Baidu.News - news aggregator, such as Yandex.News;
Baidu. Finance and Baidu. Index - a huge number of financial services for tracking trends on the stock exchange, the index of securities;
Baidu. Downloading - own file exchange system;
Baidu. Games - multiplayer online RPG, strategy, racing;
Baidu also has its own map service - Baidu.Map. Again, "correct", without any secret military bases and submarines near Taiwan.
I'm not talking about the toolbar, internet pager, antivirus and electronic dictionary. In general, why should I “Wikipedia” or Google.Maps, when there is all his own, dear and understandable.
E-commerce empire
About Alibaba (http://www.alibaba.cn) in RuNet has been repeatedly mentioned. First of all, it is the world's largest B2B platform with its Alipay payment system (https://alipay.com) and an Internet pager. On Alibaba, there are more than one thousand companies looking for suppliers, partners and customers. But this “cinema is not for everyone”, but only for legal entities.
For all the others, there is Alibaba's daughter, Taobao (http://taobao.com). This is China's largest online store and online auction B2C / C2C. If almost no one heard about Amazon and eBay in the Celestial Empire, then an advertising series is being filmed about Taobao, where the plot of each series comes down to buying another thing in this online store. And there you can buy almost everything: from clothes, electronics and furniture to accessories of the sex industry, medicines and antiques.
Everyone can create a shop on Taobao. You can sell anything that does not violate the laws of the PRC. The site has a complex system of rating and credibility for both sellers and buyers. And the most important thing is competition. What allows you to choose on the site quality and cheap goods.
Taobao has a wild popularity in China. For example, walking through the normal market can be seen on the signs of individual shops the site of the store on Taobao and QQ-number.
Great Chinese Penguin
No, not Red Flag Linux, but the national QQ online pager (http://www.qq.com). It is also known as OICQ, Tencent Messenger. The QQ image of a penguin is so ingrained in the minds of Chinese users that the qq-number is often called “wang hao” (internet number). You may not have e-mail, but everyone should have QQ. Ancient Chinese omen says: the loss of a QQ-number is in trouble. And the next Chinese copy of Toyota was called QQ.
What can I say! - My friend was reprimanded when he did not appear at the meeting, which was reported in the QQ-group. Fortunately, in recent years, QQ has begun to be blocked in the workplace, which has enabled the development of alternative messengers.
However, this is "not just a messenger." The Chinese love everything to the maximum, so get - music, games on the web, the payment system, something like tamogochi, blogs, etc. Isn't it strange that official clients weigh from 25 to 60 megabytes. And the advertising palette finishes to the end: pop-ups, banners in messages, qq-spam.
You can guess that Big Brother is watching you here too. They also write in QQ with a special slang, when registering, they need to enter this information, up to the ID number, otherwise they can “harmonize”.
Social boom
The popularity of social networks has not bypassed the Middle Kingdom. The most famous social networks are Xiaonei (http://xiaonei.com) and Hinei (http://hainei.com). Both belong to the same owner, both are similar to Facebook and each other. Only the name distinguishes them: the first is translated as “at school”, the second is “at sea” (by the sea is meant life). Nothing like the Russian clones?
In China, they have not yet had such success as Facebook, and QQ still rules — but still ahead.
Varese - yes!
The Chinese government has stepped up the fight against piracy on the Internet. The Chinese sites that were once popular in the West, EnFull, FullDown, FixDown, are being closed down or paid, where you could download not only “cracks”, but full retail versions of paid programs.
But bt and ed2k file exchange networks are very popular and widely developed. Developments are underway on national substitutes, for example, Blin.cn (http://blin.cn), which is claimed to be 50 times faster than BitTorrent.
* * *
In conclusion, I want to say that Cinet is self-sufficient and can safely do without Western sites. YouTube alone accounts for more than 20 Chinese peers. Services similar to Last.fm have long been provided by QQ and Baidu.
In the future, when China takes over the whole world, it will be difficult for us to live without the Chinese Internet, and not him without us.
This article was written by me specifically for the Web Planet , I decided to make a crosspost here.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/27374/
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