THE MAN seen as the creator of the internet censorship system known as the Great Firewall of China has been forced to take down his personal blog just days after launching it.
Fang Binxing, president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, faced a blizzard of criticism of his creation from internet users on his microblog on the sina.com site.
The Great Firewall is a system of controls which filters content the Chinese Communist Party considers politically sensitive or harmful.
Search terms related to sensitive issues such as pro-democracy campaigners or Tibetan independence are routinely blocked, while it also blocks social networking site Facebook, the video-sharing service YouTube and the Twitter microblogging site.
China has the world’s largest online population, with over 420 million users. The internet has become a major forum for the exchange of ideas and the government, which keeps a tight grip on dissent in traditional media such as newspapers and TV, started rolling out the firewall about six years ago. Some 40,000 internet monitors are said to be employed by the government to keep an eye on internet content.
The web users rounded on Mr Fang for setting up the security system, saying it badly affected online freedom of speech, the Global Times newspaper reported.
“Fang Binxing, the Great Firewall, has deprived people of their right to freely access the internet,” one user wrote on the site.
Others were more forthright.
“Animal. Running dog of the government, lower than animals,” wrote one.
New media commentator Bei Feng told the Global Timesthe fierce reactions of internet users reflected the anger among web users at the firewall. However, he said the effectiveness of the censorship device was in question these days because many internet users can still access blocked websites through proxy servers and virtual private networks.
Research by the Hudong.com website showed that the most popular terms on the internet in China in 2010 were “microblog” and “WikiLeaks”.