<p>50-year-old Fang Binxing, the inventor of the Great Firewall (GFW) of China and a recipient of several top Chinese government awards for his invention, had to shut down his microblog to escape from the "dirty abuse".<br /><br />Fang was surprised to see the barrage of hate mail when he opened his account on a popular microblog Sina.Com used by over 100 million bloggers in China. Fang's handiwork brought down on him an intense barrage of online criticism in December when he opened a microblog on Sina.com, official 'Global Times' said. "Within three hours, nearly 10,000 Web users left messages for the father of the GFW. Few were complimentary," it said.<br /><br />Fang who had "shut down his microblog account after a few days" to escape the fury however dismisses it as a "sacrifice for the country". Defending his work to block the content, the IT scholar said he was only doing the right thing even if he got sticks and stones. Fang proudly confirms that he was head designer for key parts of the GFW which was launched in 1998 and went online in 2003.<br /><br />"I regard the dirty abuse as a sacrifice for my country. They can't get what they want so they need to blame someone emotionally: like if you fail to get a US visa and you slag off the US visa official afterwards," he told the daily.<br /><br />"This massive accumulation of sarcastic and ugly abuse of Fang all stemmed from his role in creating a technology that filters controversial keywords and blocks access to websites deemed sensitive," the paper said. One proud tale, Fang would like to narrate was how his GFW made China impregnable with the founder of Face Book, Mark Zuckerberg openly wondering about how to break it during his visit to Beijing during Christmas last year.<br /><br />Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg is said to have pleaded with local Chinese entrepreneurs to show him how to beat the Great Firewall. "Ever since I landed here in China I can't log onto my Facebook account!" Zuckerberg reported to have said at a meeting. "The joke might not be real, but the Great Firewall of China is very much alive, blocking the world's most popular websites including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and WikiLeaks", the daily said.<br /><br />Recently, Chinese micro bloggers complained that developments relating to mass uprising in Egypt were blocked in China fearing that it might inspire similar protests locally. <br /><br />Fang says he uses six virtual private networks (VPNs) to access some of the websites he had originally helped block. "I have six VPNs on my home computer," said Fang, who works as a professor at the National University of Defence Technology here besides Dean of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.<br /><br />"But I only try them to test which side wins: the GFW or the VPN. I'm not interested in reading messy information like some of that anti-government stuff," he said.<br />Fang refuses to reveal how the Great Firewall works saying "it is confidential."<br /><br />"My design was chosen in the end because my project was the most excellent. The country urgently needed such a system at that time," he said. He claimed that firewall is a "common phenomenon around the world. "As far as I know, about 180 countries including South Korea and the US monitor the Internet as well," he said.<br /><br />The GFW was regarded as a major invention for the ruling Chinese Communist Party which rules the country with iron first blocking all dissidence. The Firewall became an effective tool to block the outside world as internet caught up fast in China as part of its economic development.<br /><br />Today, the country has over 450 million internet users the largest in the world, which the GFW insulate from the outside world. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton described the constant blocking of the internet content by China as "dictator's dilemma" which could leave it behind the rest of the world in embarrassing new technologies.<br /><br />She said US would push projects to help people evade government Internet limits adding an additional USD 25 million this year to USD 20 million already devoted to technologies, tools and training that can help break down barriers imposed by repressive governments.<br /><br />Reacting to her remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said online users in China enjoy freedom of speech "in accordance with the law." "China objects to any country's interference with China's internal affairs under the banner of Internet freedom," he said.</p>
<p>50-year-old Fang Binxing, the inventor of the Great Firewall (GFW) of China and a recipient of several top Chinese government awards for his invention, had to shut down his microblog to escape from the "dirty abuse".<br /><br />Fang was surprised to see the barrage of hate mail when he opened his account on a popular microblog Sina.Com used by over 100 million bloggers in China. Fang's handiwork brought down on him an intense barrage of online criticism in December when he opened a microblog on Sina.com, official 'Global Times' said. "Within three hours, nearly 10,000 Web users left messages for the father of the GFW. Few were complimentary," it said.<br /><br />Fang who had "shut down his microblog account after a few days" to escape the fury however dismisses it as a "sacrifice for the country". Defending his work to block the content, the IT scholar said he was only doing the right thing even if he got sticks and stones. Fang proudly confirms that he was head designer for key parts of the GFW which was launched in 1998 and went online in 2003.<br /><br />"I regard the dirty abuse as a sacrifice for my country. They can't get what they want so they need to blame someone emotionally: like if you fail to get a US visa and you slag off the US visa official afterwards," he told the daily.<br /><br />"This massive accumulation of sarcastic and ugly abuse of Fang all stemmed from his role in creating a technology that filters controversial keywords and blocks access to websites deemed sensitive," the paper said. One proud tale, Fang would like to narrate was how his GFW made China impregnable with the founder of Face Book, Mark Zuckerberg openly wondering about how to break it during his visit to Beijing during Christmas last year.<br /><br />Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg is said to have pleaded with local Chinese entrepreneurs to show him how to beat the Great Firewall. "Ever since I landed here in China I can't log onto my Facebook account!" Zuckerberg reported to have said at a meeting. "The joke might not be real, but the Great Firewall of China is very much alive, blocking the world's most popular websites including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and WikiLeaks", the daily said.<br /><br />Recently, Chinese micro bloggers complained that developments relating to mass uprising in Egypt were blocked in China fearing that it might inspire similar protests locally. <br /><br />Fang says he uses six virtual private networks (VPNs) to access some of the websites he had originally helped block. "I have six VPNs on my home computer," said Fang, who works as a professor at the National University of Defence Technology here besides Dean of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.<br /><br />"But I only try them to test which side wins: the GFW or the VPN. I'm not interested in reading messy information like some of that anti-government stuff," he said.<br />Fang refuses to reveal how the Great Firewall works saying "it is confidential."<br /><br />"My design was chosen in the end because my project was the most excellent. The country urgently needed such a system at that time," he said. He claimed that firewall is a "common phenomenon around the world. "As far as I know, about 180 countries including South Korea and the US monitor the Internet as well," he said.<br /><br />The GFW was regarded as a major invention for the ruling Chinese Communist Party which rules the country with iron first blocking all dissidence. The Firewall became an effective tool to block the outside world as internet caught up fast in China as part of its economic development.<br /><br />Today, the country has over 450 million internet users the largest in the world, which the GFW insulate from the outside world. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton described the constant blocking of the internet content by China as "dictator's dilemma" which could leave it behind the rest of the world in embarrassing new technologies.<br /><br />She said US would push projects to help people evade government Internet limits adding an additional USD 25 million this year to USD 20 million already devoted to technologies, tools and training that can help break down barriers imposed by repressive governments.<br /><br />Reacting to her remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said online users in China enjoy freedom of speech "in accordance with the law." "China objects to any country's interference with China's internal affairs under the banner of Internet freedom," he said.</p>