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Facebook Users Dodge Censors to Climb Over China Great Firewall
2011-02-17 16:00:01.0 GMT
By Bloomberg News
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Great Firewall of China has
helped the government block websites from the Falun Gong to
Twitter Inc. for years in the world’s most censored Internet
market. He Xin recently discovered how to bypass the
restrictions.
“I climbed over the wall,” said He, an electrical
technology major at China’s Yanshan University in Qinhuangdao.
“Very few of my classmates and friends can climb over the wall,
so I can’t add them as friends on Facebook yet.”
He uses UltraReach Internet Corp.’s free Ultrasurf, one of
the growing number of so-called Virtual Private Network services
used in the world’s biggest Internet market to circumvent
censors. Facebook Inc. users in China, blocked in the country
since 2009, have more than doubled in the past month to exceed
700,000 after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg visited
the country, according to data compiled by Socialbakers.com, a
site dedicated to analyzing Facebook statistics.
“The number will probably double over next six months,”
said Jim Tang, a Shanghai-based analyst at Shenyin Wanguo
Securities Co., who covers Chinese Internet companies including
Tencent Holdings Ltd. “With the visit of their CEO to China, he
probably got them more exposure.”
Even with the exponential growth, the number of Facebook
users in China will be miniscule relative to the nation’s 457
million Internet users, the world’s largest, Tang said.
Chinese Ban
While VPNs are mainly used by companies to give employees
secured access to corporate networks, they can also allow
individuals to surf the Internet anonymously because the
services employ private “proxy” servers that encrypt data.
“Proxy servers are a key technology that is at the center
of how the Internet works, so it can’t simply be
indiscriminately banned,” said Professor Alvin Chan, who
teaches computing at the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong.
The way the technology is being used to circumvent Web censors
is an “unintended offshoot,” he said.
For example, a Chinese user seeking to access Facebook
would first start an encrypted connection with a VPN service,
which would then get on the social-networking website. To
Internet-service providers such as China Telecom Corp., that
connection would only show the user as having logged on to the
VPN server, not Facebook’s. The process also works in reverse,
enabling VPN users outside of the U.S. to watch geographically
restricted services such as Hulu LLC’s online videos.
Still, VPNs can slow down data speeds and require
additional software and costs.
Facebook Demand
AnchorFree Inc., a Mountain View, California-based startup,
said it saw 1.5 million people using its free VPN service in
China during January, a 25 percent increase from the previous
month.
“There’s general growth in demand for getting onto
Facebook and other social media sites everywhere,” said David
Gorodyansky, chief executive officer of AnchorFree.
China, which bans pornography, gambling and content
critical of the ruling Communist Party, blocks websites
including Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Google Inc.’s YouTube,
which don’t follow the nation’s self-censorship rules. Google
pulled its search engine out of China last year after deciding
it would stop censoring its content.
“Facebook will continue to be blocked unless they agree to
comply to rules set by the Chinese government,” Tang said.
“Other than that it’s not likely to happen.”
Wang Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology, declined to comment on the country’s
Internet censorship policies. Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for
Facebook, also declined to comment.
Zuckerberg Visit
The recent spurt in Facebook users in the country may be
partly due to a December visit by Zuckerberg, which generated
much media coverage, said Tang at Shenyin Wanguo.
Zuckerberg visited China in December and met with
executives at domestic Internet companies including Baidu Inc.
and Sina Corp. during the trip. He also met with Wang Jianzhou,
chairman of China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest mobile-phone
company by subscribers. Wang said last month they discussed
“the possibility of cooperation” in China.
Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said at the time
Zuckerberg’s China trip was a personal vacation.
Last week, Facebook opened an office in Hong Kong, bringing
the company closer to China, where Susquehanna International
Group LLP estimates the online advertising market will triple to
almost $13 billion by 2014.
Egypt Protests
The popularity of VPNs aren’t sufficient for Facebook to
match domestic social-networking sites, said Paul Wuh, a Hong
Kong-based analyst at Samsung Securities Co. Tencent’s Qzone
site has about 480 million users, while Renren.com has about 160
million, and Kaixin001.com has more than 93 million.
Facebook has about 621 million users worldwide, with the
U.S. accounting for the most with 149 million, according to
Socialbakers.com. Indonesia, the U.K., Turkey, and the
Philippines constitute the next four, according to the website.
The recent use of social-networking services to organize
protests in Egypt won’t help the prospect of China granting
access to Facebook or Twitter, Wuh said.
“It will be hard to allow any company outside of China so
much influence,” Wuh said. “When you consider the number of
Internet users in China, the number on Facebook is just a blip.
It will never be open enough so that most people can use it.
It’s too risky.”
That openness is what users like He and a growing number of
Chinese crave for.
“I’ve only been on Facebook a few days, and what I see on
Facebook is indeed different from the mainland-controlled
websites,” said He. “Maybe this is politics.”
For Related News and Information:
Stories on Facebook: 798754Z US CN
Stories on social networking: NI SOCIALNET
Top technology news: TTOP
Stories on China’s Internet industry:
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