Why should the Chinese hide IP address?

Chinese authorities have blocked Internet access for search engines (SE): Google, Yahoo! and Live Search (MSN). The only way out for the Chinese now is to hide IP address in order to avoid the pursuit of the government.

Asians are known for their strange traditions from European point of view. Today, on the 19th of October 2007, it became clear, that unusual Asian views for outward things are also spreading on the methods of Internet sites promotion and Network censorship. Chinese Internet providers have changed routes of Network connections. Therefore none of Chinese Internet users will be able to enter any international Internet Search engines - with any address typed –because the redirecting will be done to Baidu, the National Internet Search. But, using programs that allow to hide IP address they can bypass these rules. Thus, we can say that now all of them have a chance to live a full life.

Frankly speaking it is not a surprise that the Chinese government censors the Internet sector - the country has very strong regulations regarding the freedom of speech. In any case, these rules are much stronger than in any other country. The Internet search engine is a place where the Chinese were able to read all of the hidden facts regarding the first persons of the country.

Probably, this is the main reason why the access to many of the most popular portals is blocked for the Chinese. For common Internet users who are used to read about scandals, fights and expressed opinions of different social minorities, these Internet portals offer nothing scandalous. On the contrary, most people who are looking for the private life facts of well-known people or evidence of breaking human rights in certain countries - this information is similar to reading a tabloid- it relaxes and agitates imagination, but does not provide any valuable information.

The history has counted a lot of facts of blocking websites by Chinese authorities. The first "famous" event was a restricted access to Wikipedia in 2004. Since then, locking and unlocking Wikipedia became a regular entertainment for Chinese authorities. China locks and unlocks encyclopedia access regularly. The first reason for blocking it is that observers considered that the pages of 'free encyclopedia' contain information about the events of the 4th of July, in 1989, when the government forces dispersed the students’ demonstration on Tyananymen square (approx 400 - 2600 Chinese died as a result of this act).

Afterwards, the World organization "Reporters without borders" included China in the 'Enemy of Internet' list for confining the freedom of speech (that rating included China on the first place and Belarus as well). Official China made a protest to the organization and declared that 'The Chinese have easy Internet access and can find all the information they need. Nowadays, the residents of China are able to receive much more information than before the Global network came to China. Just like other countries, we control the Global network in accordance with our internal laws.' Apparently, in accordance with these laws China blocked access to Google's pages in summer 2006. Only after consent of the Google's management to organize search results censorship in their SE – the popular portal became available to Chinese users. Microsoft and Yahoo did the same that year!

Virtual space regulation in China is not limited to search engines only. The development of blogging communities is also controlled by China's authorities. Thus, in 2007 twocompanies Yahoo and Microsoft signed an agreement. In accordance with that agreement they assumed obligations to control the blogs of Chinese users. Among other limitations, the bloggers were informed that they couldn't use pseudonyms, only real names and other personal information also could be used. Yahoo was accused of helping China's authorities and violating human rights. According to accusers, Yahoo exposed materials from the private mailbox of the political prisoner Van Syaonin to the China's authorities.

In 2007 popular portals LiveJournal and Flickr were blocked. The reasons are unknown. On September 11, 2007 Chinese authorities blocked access to Yandex in the capital of China and in a number of provinces. As always, Chinese authorities did not comment their actions, thus it is still unknown why popular SE was blocked.

In general, it is not a surprise for everyone anymore when Chinese government blocks some web resource. Thanks to the software like SmartHide that can hide IP address it's possible for the Chinese to surf the Internet and be aware of everything that's going on in the World. There's another interesting fact - China redirects network queries from Google, Yahoo! and LiveSearch to national search engine Baidu.cn, which incredibly increases its traffic. We should point out that according to evaluations made by independent specialists Baidu is much lower than Google and Yahoo! mainly due to the heavy control over its database by Chinese authorities. Each and every "undesirable" link is filtered out right away. Thus, China Internet users are left without many "goodies" the Internet provides. Communication media suffer as well. It’s very hard to talk about freedom of speech under such circumstances. And once again, it’s important to point out that the Chinese do not stop their attempts to solve this problem by using anonymizers and hide ip address software which they're constantly looking for all over the Internet space.

It is possible that for the good of the Chinese the politics of the Chinese government , which declared war to the Internet independence, is useful. From this point of view, users theoretically exposed to virtual "drug" will only win - their mental health will be unharmed.

The Chinese should know better!