Policy wise, the “Great Fire Wall” is as strong as ever, but practically speaking, cracks are appearing all over the place. Earlier this year we shared a video made at the 2009 Chinese Blogger Conference in which Chang Ping talked about how fang qiang, the act of “scaling the wall,” was the biggest “keyword” for Chinese Internet users in 2009. In January, the New York Times ran a story on elite netizens’ various attempts to reach out and touch the rest of the Internet.
But the truth is that the “Great Fire Wall” has never been particularly robust. With 384 million Internet users in China, there’s just no way a government agency even one with 30,000 pairs of eyes as can possibly keep track of it all.