Victor Zakharchenko. Great Firewall

Great Firewall
Victor Zakharchenko

Publication date: January 11, 2002

On September 20 , 1987, Professor Qian Tianbai sent the first Chinese E-Mail from China with the title “Access to the World Through the Great Wall,” thus marking the beginning of the use of the Internet by the Chinese. The first Internet project of the CANET (Chinese Academic Network) network was a research project carried out in 1986 by the Beijing Computer Research Institute in collaboration with the German University of Karlsruhe. The communication speed at the initial stage was 300bps.

In April 1990, a project was launched to create a network of educational and scientific institutions (NCFC) in Beijing, which was financed by the World Bank. The project was carried out under the leadership of the Academy of Sciences and implemented jointly by Peking University and Tsinghua University.

In October 1990, Professor Qian Tianbai, as a representative of China, officially registered the Chinese top-level domain (CN) in the DDN-NIC (at that time, the DDN-NIC Network Center of the US Department of Defense ARPANET was responsible for domain allocation work). In 1992, the construction of the university network of the NCFC project was completely completed, i.e. networks of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and Tsinghua University.

On March 2, 1993, based on a leased communication channel from AT&T, a 64K line was officially opened, allocated to the Research Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (it connected with Stanford, USA). With the introduction of this line, the Chinese Internet faces big politics for the first time - the American authorities allowed it to connect only to the US energy network. This was motivated by the fact that socialist countries should have limited access to resources.

However, after the opening of the leased line, the State Fund Commission did its best to promote the development of the Internet and invested 300 thousand yuan to enable leaders of important research projects in various fields to join this leased line. This is how the first global email service was organized in China. In June 1993, at the INET '93 conference, NCFC experts reaffirmed China's request for Internet connectivity in consultation with decision-makers from international Internet organizations.

For a long time, China did not attach importance to the Internet as a means of national and international communication, giving preference to EDI networks that fully meet the stringent requirements of the Chinese authorities for manageability and controllability. However, the rapid development of information technology and the emergence of a whole sector of new services based on Internet communications forced the Chinese leadership to change their attitude towards the Internet and begin to form their own scientific and technological base for creating Internet applications.

At the beginning of 1994, a joint meeting on scientific and technological cooperation between China and the United States was held in Washington. At this meeting, academician Hu Chiheng, on behalf of the Chinese government, formally expressed to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) a request from the PRC to join the global network. The request was granted. On April 20, 1994, the international line (64K) of the NCFC project was opened through the American company Sprint. On May 15, 1994, the Research Institute of High Energy Physics under the Academy of Sciences created China's first web server.

On May 21, 1994, with the assistance of Professor Qian Tianbai and the University of Karsluhe, the Computer Network Information Center received the CN top-level domain for administration .

In September 1994, the head of China TV and the US Secretary of Commerce signed the Sino-US Internet Agreement, which stipulated that China TV would open two leased lines (64K) through Sprint. As a result, construction of the public network CHINANET began .

In March 1995, the Academy of Sciences completed work to remotely connect branches in Shanghai, Hefei, Wuhan and Nanjing using IP/X.25 technology, which was the first step in spreading the Internet throughout the country.

On February 11, 1996, Decree No. 195 of the State Council of the People's Republic of China "Temporary Rules for the Management of Information Networks of Internet Computers in the People's Republic of China" was published. On September 6, 1996, the Chinese Golden Bridge Network (ChinaGBN) (US line, 256K) was opened , which provided Internet services to individual and corporate users.

On May 20, 1997, the State Council of the People's Republic of China published the "Resolution of the State Council of the People's Republic of China on amendments to the" Temporary Rules for the Management of Information Networks of Internet Computers in the People's Republic of China ". On June 3, 1997, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) was created, performing the functions of a state information center. Already in November In 1997, CNNIC published the first "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China."

By October 31, 1997, there were more than 290 thousand computers connected to the Internet and 620 thousand users in China. The Chinese web was represented by 4066 registered pages, another 1500 sites were located in international domain zones. At the time of writing the report, the international output width was 18.64 Mbps. In 1997, CHINANET made connections with the other three Internet networks in China ( China Science Network , The China Education and Research Network and China Golden Bridge Network ).

In June 1999, CNNIC published the fourth "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China". By June 30, 1999, China had 1.46 million Internet-connected computers and 4 million users, 29,045 thousand registered .CN domain sites, 9,906 global domains, and an international output width of 241M.

On October 1, 1999, the Ministry of Information Industry reduced prices for Internet services (dialing costs and the difference in tariffs for telephone calls in different time zones were waived).

This contributed to an increase in the number of users and increased competition in the provider market. All this together stimulated the development of Chinese resources . Particular attention should be paid to Chinese portals. This title is easy to obtain in China; self-proclaimed portals are registered in many directory categories. But there are also those who can really lay claim to this proud name.

Chinese Internet portal SOHU.com was named one of the Top 300 Small Companies of 2001 by Forbes Magazine. According to statistics, this portal is the most visited resource in Chinese on the Internet. This is confirmed by the fact that more than half of Chinese users chose SOHU.com as their home page.

Sohu.com announced a strategic alliance with the famous Chinese pharmaceutical website 999com.cn . The goal of the alliance is to create a new generation of healthcare products. The new site will be called " Sohu Special 999 Health Center ".

The 999 Group of Companies, based in the special economic zone of Southern China (Shenzhen), was the first company in China to offer a full range of services for the production, wholesale, retail and online trading of various medicines in the Chinese market.

At the same time, Sohu.com is also a pioneer in the local B2B services market. The portal announced the launch of the Interactive Business Center. The center will provide Chinese and foreign companies with a full range of services related to online presentations, web exhibitions, web conferences, online consultations, training and research.

Another leader in the Chinese network space, the portal SINA.com , is currently going through hard times. In its report, SINA.com announced a net loss of $10.25 million during the first quarter of fiscal 2001. This is a decrease of 15.42% compared to the last quarter of FY2000. SINA.com has 11 million registered customers and 46 million visits per day (data as of the end of September this year). The total number of employees in the company has reached, you know, 666 people.

Recently, the company has shown great interest in the Chinese Internet labor market. Plans have been announced to collaborate with three of China's largest online staffing agencies: ChinaHR.com , 51Job.com and Zhaopin.com .

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, about 87 percent of Chinese users are between the ages of 18 and 35, i.e. - an age group traditionally focused on employment and career, which makes the combined service very promising.

The Chinese web also has many highly specialized portals. For example, Japanese-funded 81518.com was created in 2000 with a total investment of 10 million yuan (USD 1.2 million). The portal specializes in direct sales of raw materials such as cotton and polyester, as well as trade in textile products. Over the past year, the portal sold products worth 2 million yuan ($240,000).

There is also a real business portal in China. CITIC INDUSTRIAL BANK and CITIC SECURITIES, part of the largest Chinese corporation CITIC Group, jointly launched an online financial service eCITIC.com . It was a continuation and development of the integrated financial services offered by CITICIB.com.cn and CITICS.com . In general, the e-business market in China, for all its promise, has not had the best two years. So, last year, when e-business was booming around the world, up to 70% of dot-com companies went bankrupt in China.

But belonging to the portal caste does not at all guarantee leadership in popularity, as research into the priorities of Chinese users confirms.

The mail service 163.com (163 is a single telephone code for the entire country to enter ChinaNet) attracts 4.9 million unique visitors, which is 67.3% of the total number of home users registered in China. Sina.com and sohu.com took second and third place, respectively. By the way, the popularity of digital titles on the Chinese Internet is far from accidental. This is due, first of all, to echoes of Chinese numerology . This theory underlies the teachings of Feng Shui . The Chinese, who are very sensitive to their teachings and traditions, have given names consisting only of numbers to many Internet resources. If we ignore the mysticism, we should remember that most providers in China provide services to, so to speak, an “anonymous” subscriber. With this connection, the number, password and login correspond to one number, which is in the name of the supplier. Simple dot-coms also adopted this idea. Among the most popular are search engines 321.com.tw and 5415.com ; information portals 1768.net , 2911.com , 3721.com , 82.com.cn and 8848.com .

Names consisting of numbers alone are not the only original feature of the local web. As you understand, the official language of the Chinese Internet is Chinese (as a rule, sites have either an English or a Chinese version). Hence its own encoding, which brought hieroglyphs to the Internet. They, in turn, added a lot of color to emoji culture. Of course, you will not find Chinese emoticons in a typical catalog due to the same problem with encodings, but this does not mean that they do not exist. In forums and chats on the Chinese Internet, and indeed on most entertainment resources, such emoticons are very popular. But there are emoticons that are familiar to us, but also with a non-common Asian expression. Their peculiarity is that they are made according to the “look straight” type - ^_^ instead of :-).

But let’s continue the story about the whales of the Chinese Internet. has achieved great success recently The information site cninfo.net . It targets China Telecom mobile phone users. can also boast of good results The resource of the Beijing provider "Capital Online" topcool.net . It should be noted that the same provider owns another popular project 263.net .

Many people are obviously expecting us to start talking about how strictly censorship the evil Communist Chinese authorities have imposed on the local Internet. This is true and not true at the same time. By the standards of democratic European countries, there is a clear infringement of freedom of speech in China, but the Chinese themselves most often consider this attitude to be normal.

The attention of the authorities concerned, of course, both access to foreign sites and Chinese resources. It was decided to issue a license to publish news. Sina.com and Sohu.com, two of China's largest portals listed on the NASDAQ electronic exchange, were the first to receive a license from the Chinese government. It is still unclear how many licenses the Chinese government intends to issue to other portals.

Of course, the Internet is seen by Beijing as a potential carrier of subversive political information. Under the new rules, websites can only publish censored news from official government news sources.

no less (if not more) get The owners of cyber cafes in China . The country regularly conducts mass inspections of such establishments in order to “suppress illegal operations.” The inspection is carried out jointly by the ministries of culture, information industry and public security, as well as the state administration of industry and trade. The interest is not accidental, because at the beginning of last year in China, every fifth user accessed the Internet through a cyber cafe. The authorities are dissatisfied with the distribution of anti-government materials and banned video games through the Internet. This government policy leads to the regular closure of thousands of Internet cafes that fall under the regulations. Chinese police also closed the country's only online casino and arrested four of its organizers. But it’s also not worth talking about an insane terrorist. Most verification actions remain on paper, and cyber cafes continue their work simply by changing the sign.

However, the Chinese government is developing the Internet. Firstly, in order to increase the intellectual potential of the nation by introducing the Chinese to the Internet. Secondly, the Network should become a specific environment within which the process of “growing” of the new China into the world will take place. Thirdly, new information technologies should become a powerful tool for social monitoring, practically a new means of governing the country.

The last task once again reminds us that Big Brother can also come to us through a modem.

PS The author expresses sincere gratitude to independent consultant Igor Mazharov for assistance in writing the material.