China is the largest country in the world in terms of population. According to the 2010 census, it was home to about 1 billion 348 million people. Over the past decades, having made a colossal breakthrough in the scientific and industrial sphere, China has become a country with one of the most developed economies, and is in first place in terms of gold and foreign exchange reserves.
For a long time, due to the domination of a rigid political and ideological system, access of Chinese citizens to the Internet was limited. For example, it was only in 1993 that the Institute for High Energy Physics in Beijing was able to connect to the network. And in 1995, China Telecom, through two channels connecting China with the United States, began to provide Internet services through telephone lines - DDN and X.25 network. The bandwidth of these channels by today's standards looks ridiculous: 64 KB / s. In 1997, the country already had about 300 thousand computers connected to the Internet, and about 620 thousand users.
Well, at present, in terms of the number of citizens who regularly use Internet services (approximately 298 million), China has come out on top in the world, pushing back the United States. According to opinion polls, of these 298 million people, about 210 million make various purchases using the global network, and over 44 million pay bills. The vast majority of users are connected to high-speed Internet through providers such as China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile.
The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party prefers to conduct a cautious policy towards users. While recognizing that the Internet is very useful for education and business, the authorities at the same time are trying to restrict access to sites that contain obscene materials or promote unwanted (from the point of view of the authorities) ideas. Web pages are filtered by keywords generated by state security officials and by a blacklist of site addresses. Foreign search engines also filter search results in the same way.
In order to be able to use the network in an Internet cafe, users need to present identity documents. And in the capital of China, the owners of Internet cafes are required to equip the premises with video surveillance cameras and keep records of visitors.
