what about the wall country

"The old country is surrounded by the truth, the vast years are surrounded by desires and ideals." Although in modern society, the Great Wall will not hinder anything, but in the online world, there is another way called " The "Great Wall of the Internet" still surrounds this country.

One of the most popular MMORPG "FF14" on the ground, a group of Chinese players recently signed a collective protest against the operation of a large-scale ban of Chinese players' accounts, but was criticized "Did the party mother let you over the wall?". In fact, not only "FF14" players, but all "Secondary Yuan" (Chinese ACG fans) actually face the same problem about "Climbing the Wall".

Gamers in the free world can start the game as long as they turn on the console or computer, and can watch various information and film and television works, regardless of ACG. It may be unimaginable how difficult it would be for players to do the same thing in a country where even this power is limited.

China is not on earth

Although most online games are divided into different regions, after the rise of direct mobile games, more and more games are shared servers all over the world, but these "globally common" games often have another "Chinese version", such as "Shadow Poems" "Only a single server in the world, as well as the Chinese version represented by NetEase, "Candy Crush Saga" represented by Tencent, and even Chinese-made games such as "Azur Lane" and "Genshin Impact", just like the earth It is divided into "China" and "Outside China". Therefore, there is a saying among Chinese players that "Hong Kong is not in China, Japan is not in Asia, and China is not in the earth." Often "global servers" are not part of China.

policy dictates

This is not just a market factor such as a local agent in the market segment. All Chinese versions of games must be separated. In fact, it is also a policy result. China has policy regulations since around 2016. All services targeting Chinese people (not just games), Its server must be built in China. This is also the reason why the global iCloud is the only one in China that uses the cloud in Guizhou. The ostensible reason is to improve the quality of user connections. In fact, it is to comply with the CCP’s law that it has the right to request access to any server in the country. To a certain extent, the game is not its main goal.

modern tower of babel

Games are meant to be played by multiple people. Some game makers use methods to approximate the same server in the world under legal requirements. The simplest violence is that the global server is located in China, but the poor quality of China's external connections makes players Complaining so much, it has been abandoned. The other is that the Chinese server and the global server share the same data, and the two sides exchange information in real time. For example, the Japanese sparrow game "Sparrow Soul" made in China does this. However, in 2019, a clause was added directly to prohibit the data linkage of domestic and foreign servers, and this "technical foul" method was also expressly prohibited. This policy has become tighter and tighter since its introduction. For example, "Clash of Clans" was originally divided into Chinese and international servers, but it was also forcibly separated. Chinese players in the international server and non-Chinese players in the Chinese server were forced to Driven away, the Berlin Wall stands on the web.

What is the wall over the wall

To break through the wall, you have to "fly over the wall". You may have heard this word more or less. The author will briefly explain: this wall to be overturned is called GFW, short for Great Firewall, and is generally called the Great Wall of the Internet in Chinese. Or the Great Firewall, which is derived from the English Great Wall of the Great Wall. This is not its official name, but it is used to call it internationally.

This is of course not a real city wall, but it is also different from a computer's Firewall, it is not even a single system or software, it is more a concept and policy, the purpose is to block and filter information.

progressive control

The Great Wall of the Internet is everywhere these days, filtering all messages coming in and out of China. Initially, it only focused on politically sensitive objects, or information search tools like Google and Wikipedia, in the final analysis, did not want the public to be exposed to information that the CCP deems politically sensitive. Therefore, it usually did not get ACG very much in the past. At most, Chinese players have to use Baidu or go over the wall to Google to find a strategy. Until recent years, even ACG has to be managed.

Old Driver's Guide

In fact, the development of the entire Great Wall of the Internet is also more and more controlled. Initially, the Internet was underdeveloped, and only some websites were blocked by means of a blacklist. For the sake of righteousness and legitimacy, most of the thousands of websites on the blacklist are pornographic websites, and some people joked that this is basically an "old driver's guide". Most people (including the author) realized that the Great Wall of the Internet existed when it included Google into the blockade. At first, the connection became unstable, and it often took several times to connect, but the network at that time was actually It is not as reliable as it is now. In the eyes of ordinary people, it is not that it can no longer be connected with a "bang" one day, but it is gradually becoming more and more difficult to connect.

Key words

Even if it is connected, if the search result has a certain word, it will be blocked in seconds. The interesting thing is that if this is the case, you will see the original search result for about a second and a half, just like someone closed your page. The same, in fact, it is an error in half of the page read. This is keyword shielding. When the Great Wall of Network finds that there are keywords in the page, the connection will be interrupted and the reading error will occur. It takes a single page as a unit. Therefore, there is often a phenomenon that only a certain discussion string in the entire forum cannot be entered. Like the game base and the early Bahamut (Baja was later banned from all stations).

In that era, even the communication software was transmitted in plain text (that is, others could see the content you sent), so there would still be MSN or web games (aka online chat rooms with mini-games) chatting, and the network was suddenly disconnected for 600 seconds. tidy. There is also a very interesting phenomenon. If someone in the forum wants to expel the Chinese, they will fill in the keywords, so that the other party cannot enter the page.

From "Harmony" to "SC"

At first, because the blocking method was rough, there were still quite a few ways to bypass it. For example, in order to block the corresponding keywords, various "black words" were developed. For example, because of the official promotion of the "harmonious society" policy, "harmony" became a network. Popular words refer to various bans in general. As a result, "harmony" itself became a keyword, and it was written as a homophonic "river crab", and then "river crab" became a keyword, so it was changed to "aquatic products", and even the initials "SC" in Pinyin. ”, this habit still exists today, and it is not limited to escaping keywords and becoming a culture. For example, the second element of the first text is written as “two-thorn salamander”, so you will see Chinese netizens say more and more. Difficult to understand.

Beyond the barricade

Of course, there is a more direct way, that is, "Climbing the Wall". From the original proxy server to the now well-known VPN, the principle is to go through a third-party server to bypass the Great Wall of the Internet. The original proxy server was still transmitted in clear text, and keywords had to be bypassed. Later, HTTPS and VPN were encrypted, and the Great Wall of the Internet could not read the transmission content, so it was impossible to check whether there were keywords.

"Climbing the wall" is not a panacea

But this "over the wall" is not invincible. The Great Wall of the Internet has always had countermeasures, and it is very simple - since it cannot be checked, then all the content that cannot be checked will be blocked. Between encryption and anti-encryption, there has been a continuous tug of war for many years. Once upon a time, China would have the same website, which could be seen through HTTP connection, but invisible through encrypted HTTPS connection. However, since the network completed the transition and all transmissions were only using HTTPS, the Great Wall of the Internet gave up this model.

Surrounding the teacher must que

The same principle applies to VPNs, but why do VPNs still work today? It can be said that it is just an illusion of freedom. The CCP deliberately let go of it and did not block it. First of all, guess how many Chinese netizens use VPN? Some people may think that "Climbing the Wall" is a national skill, but in fact, this proportion is less than 5%, and has recently been declining year by year. Everyone thinks that there are a lot of Chinese people who "flip the wall". In fact, it is just an illusion of a huge absolute value. 5% of the 1.4 billion is already three times the number of people in Taiwan. Furthermore, as I said at the beginning, most of the folk entertainment like ACG is with one eye open and two eyes closed. Retaining this front-line window is actually Sun Tzu's art of war "encircling the division must be queuing". When besieging the city, you must leave a gap to survive, lest the enemy resist desperately.

Hierarchical blockade

Interestingly, this blockade also has levels. For the accessed end (website), the higher the level, the longer the blocked time and the harder it is to access. For example, the Bahamut video game information station with the lowest level is blocked. It can be accessed most of the time, but only on "special days". The higher-level websites are not only "blocked" (banned by the Great Wall of the Internet) all the year round, but sometimes they can't be connected no matter what, even once they try to connect. The line will disrupt the user's entire network. The same is true for game servers, especially MMORPGs where you don't go online and the game continues. It's common to miss events because you don't even go online.

class division

When the CCP needs it, it can close this front-line window at any time. Whenever there is a "special day", it often happens that the VPN that could have been used suddenly fails. No matter how good the security technology is, as mentioned above, all inspections cannot All connections are blocked. Among them, there is a distinction between home network and commercial network. Sometimes the home network together with a VPN fails, but the commercial network that is several times more expensive can still be used, probably to avoid affecting the economy? During my stay in the mainland, the author also had an ultimate method: direct remote control of the computer in Hong Kong to connect to the game (playing "Mudge" at the time), but this method can only be done with equipment and a fast enough internet speed.

Or even, China has "accidentally exploded" several times of blockades of the entire external network, and all external connections could not be connected. As a result, after the fact that it is highly dependent on the Internet, such blockades are only a few hours at most, but at that moment, it really Some people think that China will become the largest intranet on earth from now on, and the hearts of those who experience it are filled with such fears, which can be said to be "real horror stories". Whether it was intentional or mishandling no one can tell, but it is certain that it can be done if needed.

Penalty for illegal construction

In addition to this "big end", there is another way of thinking, using the law to prevent people from doing it, and punishing anyone who jumps over the wall. Of course, in China, there were no such clear regulations at first. It was only "illegally built" with the Internet management regulations of the year, saying that those who provided VPN services were illegal. From about 2014, people who use them will also be "interviewed". , "persuading" the other party, commonly known as drinking tea, has directly used "administrative punishment" without a clear legal source to punish those who use VPNs since 2016. This is also the reason why the number of people who use VPNs has declined year by year in recent years. As of a few months ago, the CCP’s Cyberspace Administration issued a (purely pretentious) notice for soliciting opinions, the days when “Crossing the wall and breaking the law” are clearly written into the law.

A scar on the crust

It is true that for players who "Come Over the Wall to the Earth", it is true that they can play a game outside the wall (even Steam has been blocked recently), but in the foreseeable future, this limitation will probably be limited. It will only get tighter.

Once upon a time, the author thought that the Internet could break geographical boundaries, and people could communicate freely; once upon a time, the author thought that players had no country, and everyone could be fascinated by the same game and communicate with each other. However, twenty years have passed, and the coexistence of Xiangxi has been like a dream. The land that was divided and tolerated was actually full of boundaries. Even the players in "Clash of Clans", who had good communication and interaction, were forcibly suspended by external forces. They had to say goodbye, but they couldn't say goodbye. These modern Babel stories may just reflect the splitting of the earth and the opposite of each other. Just the world.

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