Try to log onto Facebook in mainland China, and you’ll get an error message. Ditto for YouTube, Instagram, and The New York Times. Search for a controversial term like "Falun Gong" or "June 4" — the date, in 1989, of the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square — and you’ll hit a dead end. You’ve run into the Great Firewall, the Communist Party’s effort to censor what China’s citizens can see and say on the Internet. The country’s cyberpolice suppress online debate, shut down web pages and social-media accounts that mention sensitive subjects, and block access to foreign sites deemed harmful. But a nondescript glass-and-steel building in the Pudong district of Shanghai is a portal to the world beyond the Great Firewall.

September 14, 2015 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education