China's Golden Shield

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The pace and scale of the development of China’s Internet have reduced the significance of the "Great Firewall" strategy of gateways linking to a secure national "intranet." The original China-wide intranet idea was essentially overtaken by events, in particular the liberalization of the Chinese telecommunications sector.

Despite the official policy of openness suggested by China’s pending entry into the World Trade Organization, some officials still cling to the dream of a China-only information network sealed off from the dangerous temptations of the World Wide Web.

"China must build a national network that is independent of the Internet," said Jiang Zemin’s son, Dr. Jiang Mianheng, a tech-savvy vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a conference in Shanghai last June. (42)

The gateway concept, by contrast, has certainly survived, but has been undermined in part by financial and technical factors. The number and speed of the connections have grown to meet increasingly high business and consumer demand, increasing from 84.64 Mbps in the summer of 1998 to more than 351 Mbps at the end of 1999, and to more than 2.5 Gbps by 2001. Concerns for security and control have partially surrendered to economic demands for broadband convergence networks.

The implications of the construction of firewalls to prevent Chinese people from accessing forbidden materials on sites outside the country are well known. Many of the technologies used in these areas of computer security, however, could also be employed to restrict human rights and democracy through intimidation and systematic surveillance of the population.

The MPS announced last year that within three years it would have created a nationwide computerized database containing personal details and ID numbers for every adult in the country. In the past the Chinese government has kept a cumulative file (called the dangan) on every individual’s performance and attitudes from kindergarten, and throughout adult employment. This information will now be digitized and Chinese citizens will be issued new, second-generation identification cards that will contain their dangan on an embedded microchip. Currently, Chinese ID cards consist of a laminated paper card featuring a person’s name, photo, birthday and ID number. This paper card "is relatively easy to counterfeit," said Qiu Xuexin, Director of the No. 1 Research Institute under the MPS, (43) speaking recently at the Fourth International Fair of Smart Cards. Qiu added that by using sophisticated encryption it will be more difficult for unauthorized people to access government information in the new card. The second generation smart card is likely to be a "proximity card" – in other words it can be scanned instantly, from several feet away, without the subject necessarily being aware that he or she is being identified. (44)

In addition, last May, the MPS installed on Chinese Internet service providers two "black boxes" – monitoring devices dedicated to tracking the content and activity of individual e-mail accounts. Furthermore, authorities are working with technology experts at Shenzhen University to develop an "e-mail filtration system" that is able to detect and delete "unwanted" e-mails without the recipient’s knowledge or consent. (45) Most recently, the MPS has been involved in creating fake proxy servers to conduct surveillance of surfers who try to circumvent official firewalls. (46)

As in 1998, Security China 2000 was held concurrently with its sister event, Building China 2000. The Golden Shield strategy includes plans to construct "intelligent buildings" and a number of vendors promoted their systems at both trade shows. Following the trade shows Chinese-owned Datang Telecom, recently implicated in an industrial espionage case against Lucent, announced that it had won a contract to construct an intelligent building for the Jilin Provincial Public Security Bureau (PSB):

"Under the contract, Datang Telecom will be responsible for the overall design and implementation of this project, accomplishing all tasks including the construction of security monitoring system, integrated wiring, and computer networking. The implementation of this project attaches demonstrative and promotive significance to the Golden Shield that will be started soon in the national public security sector." (47)

Similar plans to integrate CCTV surveillance networks into the urban environment were recently announced by the MPS in Guangdong on a Web site dedicated to promoting the Golden Shield project. (48)

Datang has also developed its own e-mail filtration package and a number of firewalls. Datang enjoys a number of close relationships with overseas telecom manufacturers, including joint research and technology transfer projects. For instance, Datang has benefited from joint research with Nortel when the two collaborated on a project on CDMA wireless protocol, from which Datang developed a Chinese version of the protocol: TD-SCDMA.

While there is considerable evidence that China is conducting its own advanced research and developing homegrown security systems, the IT security field in China remains essentially dependent on the expertise provided by transnational corporations, through joint venture partnerships, technology transfers, and direct investment – even at the most basic technological level.

Understandably, corporations are not always keen to publicize such a relationship. Motorola, for example, supplies China’s traffic police with wireless communication devices. Journalists reported that company representatives at Security China 2000 "refused to answer questions about the firm’s involvement in the Golden Shield project..." Orin Li of Compaq China was equally evasive, claiming: "We are not the only company; everybody’s doing it. Go and ask Sun!" (49)

Sun Microsystems is indeed involved in transferring high-tech expertise to the Chinese security apparatus. Working with Changchun’s Hongda Group, market leaders in fingerprint recognition technology, Sun Microsystems developed a computer network linking all 33 provincial level police bureaus, forming one layer of the Golden Shield, allowing the PSB instant comparison of fingerprints with a nationwide database.

Cisco Systems is another example, having provided a large proportion of the routers and firewalls in China’s network. At Security China 2000 a saleswoman for the computer-network giant Cisco Systems told the group of PSB officials that her company was the world leader in firewalls, and that "China is a large potential market for this kind of technology." (50)