China builds up Great Firewall as economy grows

It is becoming, some people joke, the world's largest intranet. Over the last year, creeping internet restrictions have seen some of the west's best-known services – such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – put off limits to users in China by the Great Firewall. Even using proxies and virtual private networks to leap over the wall has become harder.

Beyond the humour is a serious point: that China has challenged the notion of the internet as a universal realm, floating free of nations, where the world's citizens can gather unhindered and exchange ideas.

Optimists enthused about the net's ability to change China. But now some are wondering whether China has changed the net. Its sophisticated and stringent censorship has shown other governments how easy it is to curb and restrict what the vast majority of their citizens see online. Of course, some evade the controls. What matters is that most do not.

"It's hard to say that China's internet is getting more and more independent, but obviously it has more and more Chinese characteristics," said new media professor Hu Yong.

"For example, there are many famous foreign websites we cannot log on to. China has its own way of managing the internet."

He added: "In the long term I believe people who use the internet in China will have a quite different direction to people using it in English, and there may even be conflicts between these two groups … There are huge cultural differences."

While China's economy is ever more entwined with the rest of the world, its internet appears to be disengaging. But that is not just due to censorship.

Many Chinese people are simply not that interested in outside sites. The Great Firewall is less of a deterrent than the language barrier, which is why the government is quicker to block sites with video or in Chinese than those with similar information in English. The names that dominate the web in the west, such as Yahoo or eBay, mean little here – just as Sohu or Taobao mean little to Americans.

But while few Chinese people were using Twitter prior to its blocking, such services provide a conduit between users outside the country and a small number inside who may then share information in other ways.

The depth of the Chinese authorities' concern about controlling the information flow was expressed vividly in an essay by the public security minister late last year.

"The internet has become a primary method for the anti-China forces to infiltrate us and amplify destructive energy," wrote Meng Jianzhu. The government has alleged that Uighur exiles used websites to incite last year's violence in Xinjiang, though it has yet to provide any evidence.

A turf war between regulatory agencies and economic protectionism – bolstering Chinese firms – has also contributed to the sense of an increasingly separate realm. And the government is not just shutting voices out. It is also learning to burnish its image and shape public opinion via the web.

But some believe that increasing controls could yet prove counter-productive: the more they ban, the more people are affected.

And when they shut down discussion on domestic sites, people may begin to look outside for information.

"You are expanding the people who think politics matters," said blogger Michael Anti.

"This last year has been very much a turning point – more people can now feel censorship."