So to Speak podcast: The Great Firewall of China

Most Americans are familiar with The Great Wall of China. Fewer are familiar with the Great Firewall of China.

The Firewall blocks vast expanses of the world’s web content — and it’s just one of the tools the Chinese government uses to monitor, censor, and even manipulate what its approximately 1.4 billion citizens see online.

On this episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, we explore one of the most extensive and effective censorship systems ever devised by a government. How does the Chinese government do it? And why?

For answers, we turn to the experts: “Charlie Smith,” the pseudonymous co-founder of anti-censorship group greatfire.org, working secretly in China; Jeremy Goldkorn, a co-founder of the Sinica Podcast and editor of supchina; and Bill Bishop, editor of the popular China policy newsletter Sinocism.

You can subscribe and listen to So to Speak on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher, or download episodes directly from SoundCloud.

Stay up to date with So to Speak on the show’s Facebook and Twitter pages, and subscribe to the show’s newsletter at sotospeakpodcast.com.

Have ideas for future shows? Email us at sotospeak@thefire.org.

Have questions you want us to answer during an upcoming show? Call them into our voicemail inbox at 215-315-0100.