China's Global Reach: Surveillance and Censorship Beyond the Great Firewall

An anonymous reader shares a report: Those outside the People's Republic of China (PRC) are accustomed to thinking of the Internet censorship practices of the Chinese state as primarily domestic, enacted through the so-called "Great Firewall" -- a system of surveillance and blocking technology that prevents Chinese citizens from viewing websites outside the country. The Chinese government's justification for that firewall is based on the concept of "Internet sovereignty." The PRC has long declared that "within Chinese territory, the internet is under the jurisdiction of Chinese sovereignty." Hong Kong, as part of the "one country, two systems" agreement, has largely lived outside that firewall: foreign services like Twitter, Google, and Facebook are available there, and local ISPs have made clear that they will oppose direct state censorship of its open Internet.

But the ongoing Hong Kong protests, and mainland China's pervasive attempts to disrupt and discredit the movement globally, have highlighted that China is not above trying to extend its reach beyond the Great Firewall, and beyond its own borders. In attempting to silence protests that lie outside the Firewall, in full view of the rest of the world, China is showing its hand, and revealing the tools it can use to silence dissent or criticism worldwide. Some of those tools -- such as pressure on private entities, including American corporations NBA and Blizzard -- have caught U.S. headlines and outraged customers and employees of those companies. Others have been more technical, and less obvious to the Western observers.