Wednesday, June 19, 2002

For Chinese Missionaries
On Monday, China closed all the Internet cafes in Beijing, the capital of China. There was a deadly fire over the weekend in one Internet cafe, and the communist government has used that as an excuse to close all of them down. As you may know, Internet use in China is heavily regulated, monitored and censored and now public access is virtually cut off in that city. It is not a country with a lot of personal computer owners, after all. And, even those who have the luxury of a private PC must face the net filtering imposed on ISPs by the central government which delete politically suspect sites, including non-registered religious sites. However, as with anything, there are ways around Internet filtering. A company called Peacefire.org offers free downloads and details methods for circumventing filtering software. It may be of use for those operating in closed societies.