Fang Binxing | |
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方滨兴 | |
Born | Harbin, Heilongjiang, China | 17 July 1960
Nationality | Chinese |
Occupation(s) | Computer scientist from China Academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering |
Political party | Chinese Communist Party |
Fang Binxing | |||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 方滨兴 | ||||||
Traditional Chinese | 方濱興 | ||||||
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Fang Binxing is a former Principal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He is also known for his substantial contribution to China's Internet censorship infrastructure,and has been dubbed "Father of China's Great Fire Wall". Fang is also known for his role in Russia's Internet censorship due to his relationship with Igor Shchyogolev,former Russian communications minister and Russian President Putin's deputy on Internet issues. [1] [2]
Fang was born on 17 July 1960 in Harbin,Heilongjiang province. Fang went to university at Harbin Institute of Technology,where he earned a PhD in computer science and became a lecturer. He began working at the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team / Coordination Center of China in 1999 as deputy chief engineer;from 2000 he was chief engineer and director. It was in this position that he oversaw the development of the filtering and blocking technology that has become known as the Great Firewall, [3] and thus,he has been dubbed "Father of China's Great Fire Wall". [4]
Fang has defended the Great Firewall in the media,stating that it is a "natural reaction to something newborn and unknown" and that web censoring is a "common phenomenon around the world". [3] Appearing on China Central Television in March 2010,Fang accused Google of conducting censorship such as Chilling Effects. [5]
Fang has helped create a major electronic surveillance operation in Chongqing for party secretary Bo Xilai. The system involved wiretaps,eavesdropping,and monitoring of internet communications. [6]
Fang also helped establish the School of Cyber Science and Technology of Harbin Institute of Technology in June 2019,which focusing on information content security,network infrastructure security,integrated security in space,air and earth,and international governance of cyberspace. [7]
Fang served as president of the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication till 2013.[ citation needed ]
On 19 May 2011,Fang was hit on the chest by a shoe thrown at him by a Huazhong University of Science and Technology student who calls himself "Hanjunyi" (Chinese :寒君依/小湖北) while Fang was giving a lecture at Wuhan University. According to RFI,the student discussed the planned shoe attack on Twitter,and with the help of other bloggers,was able to locate the exact whereabouts and the time of Fang's lecture. After the shoe throwing incident,"Hanjunyi" was able to walk out while other students were trying to obstruct school teachers who were going to detain him. "Hanjunyi" had since become an instant internet hero of the Chinese blogosphere,with bloggers offering him a large number of presents,such as cash,airline tickets,buffet dinners at Hong Kong five-star hotels,tours of various sex parlors,sight-seeing tours,a virtual private network,iPad2,admission ticket to Hong Kong Disneyland,escorted tour of Singapore,free hotel rooms,free sex with admiring female bloggers,free shoes and designer clothes. An anonymous blogger even promised him a position in his company if ever "Hanjunyi" is in trouble with the authorities. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
During an interview with CNN,"Hanjunyi" said:"I'm not happy about what he (Fang) does. His work made me spend unnecessary money to get access to the website that is supposed to be free... He makes my online surfing very inconvenient." [13]
In April 2016,reports of a botched presentation by Fang went viral. Fang was speaking at his alma mater,the Harbin Institute of Technology,and reportedly planned to display some South Korean web sites as part of the presentation. After his initial attempts were blocked by the Great Firewall,Fang publicly attempted,with mixed success,to bypass the firewall with a VPN. The question-and-answer session following the presentation was cancelled. According to Ming Pao,Fang was later resoundingly mocked online. [14] [15] [16]
China censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage,preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of their government,and severely restricting freedom of the press. China's censorship includes the complete blockage of various websites,apps,video games,inspiring the policy's nickname,the "Great Firewall of China",which blocks websites. Methods used to block websites and pages include DNS spoofing,blocking access to IP addresses,analyzing and filtering URLs,packet inspection,and resetting connections.
China has been on the Internet intermittently since May 1989 and on a permanent basis since 20 April 1994,although with heavily censored access. In 2008,China became the country with the largest population on the Internet and,as of 2024,has remained so. As of July 2023,1.05 billion use internet in China.
The Harbin Institute of Technology is a public science and engineering university in Harbin,Heilongjiang,China. It is now affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The university is part of Project 211,Project 985,and the Double First-Class Construction.
Bo Xilai is a Chinese former politician who was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges. He came to prominence through his tenures as Mayor of Dalian and then the governor of Liaoning. From 2004 to November 2007,he served as Minister of Commerce. Between 2007 and 2012,he served as a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing,a major interior municipality. He was generally considered the main political rival of Xi Jinping before Xi became the paramount leader of China.
The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets,access will be closed. If one link is closed,more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes:limiting access to foreign information sources,blocking foreign internet tools and mobile apps,and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.
Jing Zhao,also known by his pen name Michael Anti,is a Chinese journalist and political blogger,recognized for his posts about freedom of the press in China. He has been described in mid-2000s as "at one time perhaps the most famous political blogger on China's Internet.".
Freegate is a software application developed by Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) that enables internet users from mainland China,South Korea,North Korea,Syria,Vietnam,Iran,United Arab Emirates,Germany,New Zealand,Australia,and the United Kingdom among others,to view websites blocked by their governments. The program takes advantage of a range of proxy servers called Dynaweb. This allows users to bypass Internet firewalls that block web sites by using DIT's Peer-to-peer (P2P)-like proxy network system. FreeGate's anti-censorship capability is further enhanced by a new,unique encryption and compression algorithm in the versions of 6.33 and above. Dynamic Internet Technology estimates Freegate had 200,000 users in 2004. The maintainer and CEO of DIT is Bill Xia.
Yu Li (于力),better known by his pen name Sima Nan,is a Chinese television pundit,social commentator,and journalist. In the early 21st century,he is well known for his staunch support of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stances and nationalistic,anti-American sentiments. In the late 1990s,he was mostly known for his criticism of pseudoscience and supernatural phenomena,especially his opposition to what he called Qigong-related fraud.
The Li Gang incident occurred on the evening of October 16,2010,inside Hebei University in Baoding in Hebei province of China,when a black Volkswagen Magotan traveling down a narrow lane hit two university students. One of them,20-year-old Chen Xiaofeng (陈晓凤),a student from Shijiazhuang at the Electronic Information Engineering College died later in the hospital. The other victim,Zhang Jingjing (张晶晶),aged 19,remained in a stable condition,albeit suffering from a fractured left leg.
The Golden Shield Project,also named National Public Security Work Informational Project,is the Chinese nationwide network-security fundamental constructional project by the e-government of the People's Republic of China. This project includes a security management information system,a criminal information system,an exit and entry administration information system,a supervisor information system,a traffic management information system,among others.
The Wang Lijun incident was a major Chinese political scandal which began in February 2012 when Wang Lijun,vice-mayor of Chongqing,was abruptly demoted,after revealing to the United States consulate details of British businessman Neil Heywood's murder and subsequent cover-up. Amidst rumors of political infighting with Chongqing Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai,Wang arranged a meeting on 6 February at the US consulate in Chengdu,where he remained for over 30 hours. Observers speculated that Wang may have been attempting to defect or to seek refuge from Bo. He then left the consulate of his own volition and was taken to Beijing by agents and the vice minister Qiu Jin (邱进) of the Ministry of State Security. The Chongqing municipal government declared that Wang was receiving "vacation-style medical treatment".
A national intranet is an Internet Protocol-based walled garden network maintained by a nation state as a national substitute for the global Internet,with the aim of controlling and monitoring the communications of its inhabitants,as well as restricting their access to outside media. Other names have been used,such as the use of the term halal internet in Islamic countries.
VPN blocking is a technique used to block the encrypted protocol tunneling communications methods used by virtual private network (VPN) systems. Often used by large organizations such as national governments or corporations,it can act as a tool for computer security or Internet censorship by preventing the use of VPNs to bypass network firewall systems.
Hotspot Shield is a public VPN service operated by AnchorFree,Inc. Hotspot Shield was used to bypass government censorship during the Arab Spring protests in Egypt,Tunisia,and Libya.
Qin Zhihui,also known under the pseudonym Qin Huohuo,is an internet celebrity infamous as a rumormonger. He has been accused of fabricating and spreading rumors online via the Sina Weibo microblogging website.
Zhang Jialong born on May 22,1988,in Guiyang,Guizhou Province,is a Chinese journalist,blogger and a former editor of Tencent Finance.
GreatFire (GreatFire.org) is a website that monitors the status of websites censored by the Great Firewall of China and helps Chinese Internet users circumvent the censorship and blockage of websites in China. The site was first launched in 2011 by an anonymous trio. GreatFire is funded by sources inside and outside China,including the US-government-backed Open Technology Fund.
The prefecture-level city of Wuhan,the capital city of Hubei province,China,has a long and rich history that dates back over 3,500 years. Starting out from the Shang dynasty-era archaeological site at Panlongcheng associated with Erligang culture,the region would become part of the E state and Chu state during the Zhou dynasty. The region evolved into an important port on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River,and the cities of Hanyang,Hankou and Wuchang were united into the city of Wuhan in 1926. Wuhan briefly serving as the capital city of China in 1927 and in 1937. Modern-day Wuhan is known as 'China's Thoroughfare' (九省通衢) due to its status as a major transportation hub,with dozens of railways,roads and expressways passing through the city and connecting to other major cities.