May 27, 2025 11:30:00

Regional censorship in China intensifies, internet blocking in Henan province surges 10 times higher than in other regions

In China, a large-scale information censorship system known as the Great Firewall is in operation, and the Internet is constantly under strict surveillance. It has been discovered that the authorities have further tightened their censorship in Henan Province, one of the most populous and leading industrial regions in China.

A Wall Behind A Wall: Emerging Regional Censorship in China

https://gfw.report/publications/sp25/en/

'Alarming' rise in regional internet censorship in China, study finds | China | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/24/alarming-rise-in-regional-internet-censorship-in-china-study-finds

China has the most sophisticated and pervasive internet censorship regime in the world, and Chinese internet users cannot access most Western news sites and social media platforms, including Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Instagram and Meta services.

Dubbed the 'Great Firewall,' this system employs a combination of government agencies and private companies to monitor and censor online content and is required by law to remove any material it deems 'sensitive,' including information about historical or current events that contradicts the official Chinese Communist Party position.

According to a paper published on May 11, 2025 by the Great Firewall Report (GFW Report), an internet censorship monitoring platform, between November 2023 and March 2025, Henan Province experienced an average of five times more website access denials than the general region of China, and in some periods, ten times more.

In this study, Mingshi Wu and his colleagues from the GFW Report purchased servers from a cloud provider and examined the flow of Internet traffic from their base in Henan province. They then tested access to the top 1 million domains on the Internet every day and found that there were a cumulative total of about 4.2 million blocks in Henan province during the period. This is more than five times the number of domains that GFW blocks in the whole of China, about 741,500.

'We hope that our study will serve as a wake-up call for the broader censorship research community, raise awareness of the rise of local censorship in China and elsewhere, and encourage further research,' the team wrote in their paper.

It is unclear whether this measure was ordered by the Chinese Communist Party or was independently initiated by local authorities in Henan, but the imposition of a regional censorship regime in Henan is unusual because it is a less volatile region than other parts of the country.

Analysis of blocked domains shows that the blocked domains in Henan were mainly business-related websites. In 2022, four local regional banks in Henan suddenly became unable to

withdraw deposits, which led to large-scale protests in response to the tough COVID-19 response. It is speculated that this may be the reason for the stricter censorship in Henan.

by荧_Lumine

In China, which has surprised the West with its DeepSeek R1 open-source model that rivals America's most advanced AI, the rise of AI is a boon for both censors and those trying to circumvent them.

'AI has the potential to develop more sophisticated, efficient, and adaptable censorship and surveillance tools,' said Wu, who wrote the paper without revealing his identity in Chinese characters. 'On the other hand, AI can create new opportunities for those trying to understand and circumvent censorship. For example, AI can help develop more agile testing tools to detect censorship.'