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The Chinese Communist Party's Internet Blockade and the Berlin Wall

Dec. 4, 2009 |   By Zhuo Chen

(Clearwisdom.net)

1. In 1961, the East German government built the Berlin Wall and blocked all news from the free world outside the wall in attempts to make it more difficult for citizens to escape to the West. Many families were thus separated. For 28 years, the Berlin Wall acted as concrete evidence of the iron curtain, which imprisoned all East German citizens. The wall has always been a striking symbol of communist dictatorship.

No one expected its collapse in November 1989. It happened peacefully beyond the expectations of political science experts or scholars. There has not been consensus as to what caused it and why it came about at that particular time. I believe the answer is that Heaven wanted its collapse. On November 9, 1989, a spokesperson for East Germany, Gunter Schabowski, announced to reporters a new policy indicating that the travel ban would be lifted. When Italian reporter, Riccardo Ehrman asked, "When will this policy take effect?" Schabowski answered, "As far as I know, it's effective immediately, without delay." An announcement was then made on a West German television channel that East German borders were open to everyone and that same evening, the Berlin wall collapsed. Mr. Ehrmann later explained that he was instructed by a well-connected individual to ask his question. The new policy was in fact scheduled to take effect later rather than immediately.

2. Within two years of the fall of the Berlin wall, the communist parties in eastern Europe fell one after another, leading to the eventual collapse of the communist party in the Soviet Union. These positive changes caused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to work harder to block all information from the free world, so that it could continue to deceive people with its lies and to hold onto control. Since it came to power, the CCP has been controlling the exchange of information in China. In the early 1960's, it didn't even allow information to be exchanged with other communist countries. If anyone listened to Voice of America, that person would be labeled a traitor and heavily fined.

The world has now entered the information age where the Internet is the most important communication tool. The Internet is clearly a threat to the CCP. When Jiang Zemin became the party chief, he spent a huge amount of money to build the Internet firewall to try to stop any flow of news from Western countries. Starting on July 1, 2009, the CCP wanted to put a firewall and monitoring software on every computer sold in China.

3. While the CCP is doing everything it can to block information from outside China, computer experts are doing their part to create software to break through the firewall. For example, firephoenix.edoors.com, gardennetworks.com, dongtaiwang.com, wujie.net, and gpass1.com all offer software to break through China's firewall. They are known as the "five swordsmen" that break through blockades. More recently, there is another software called "Xiaoyaoyou" which allows people to surf the Internet freely.

4. The CCP employs lies and violence to keep itself in power. Its many political movements have resulted in the death of over 80 million Chinese citizens and torn many families apart. Since July 20, 1999, extremely cruel means have been used to try to crush innocent Falun Gong practitioners. At least 3307 practitioners have been tortured to death, and an unknown number of practitioners had their organs harvested and sold for profit by the communist regime.

The CCP's existence is dependent on lies, without which its existence becomes shaky. In November 2004, The Epoch Times newspaper published the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party which provides a complete account of the historical development of the CCP, including all the crimes it has committed. These historical facts expose the evil nature of the CCP and have led 63 million people to withdraw from the party and its affiliated organizations. If the five swordsmen have made a hole through the red wall, the "Nine Commentaries" has caused cracks all over it. Its fall, too, has become imminent.