Cyber Tiananmen Square and Firewalls - The Era of Institutionalized Information Control Since 1989

Cyber Tiananmen Square and Firewalls - The Era of Institutionalized Information Control Since 1989

In June 1989, the student-led pro-democracy movement that unfolded in Beijing's Tiananmen Square was suppressed by force, drawing worldwide attention. The incident left deep scars on Chinese society and at the same time instilled in the leadership a strong sense of crisis that the free flow of information was the greatest threat to the system. At the time, China was already exposed to the waves of satellite broadcasting and international communications, and it was no longer possible to ignore the influence of incoming images and news from the outside on the public consciousness.

In the early 1990s, the Chinese authorities began to develop "Internet gateways" to restrict international connections, and communications with the outside world were consolidated into lines that could be monitored and censored by the state. In 1997, Internet-related administrative regulations were promulgated, requiring users to register their real names and to keep records of their communications. Furthermore, in the 2000s, a comprehensive censorship system, the so-called "Great Firewall," was established, and access to foreign news sites, search services, and social networking services was controlled through a state-selected mechanism.

This system went beyond mere technical blocking and became the basis for the logic of the state's assertion of "Internet sovereignty. China has reinforced its policy of treating cyberspace as an extension of its national territory, prioritizing the maintenance of internal order and the blocking of external influences. As a result, China built its own information space, fostering its own set of services, such as Baidu and Weibo, while moving toward another "digital empire" that would compete with the Western-centric Internet structure.

The Tiananmen Square incident and the subsequent tightening of controls were historical turning points in which China quickly integrated cyberspace into its national strategy and ushered in the international "information warfare era" that followed.