Name: How China Created Its Own Internet
Uploaded: 2020-04-13T16:57:01.000Z
Duration: 5 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The second conditional

Imagine if the internet took hold in China.

Unrestricted internet access is a source of strength.

That country has some of the toughest  internet restrictions in the world.

The government in China's tightening up on internet restriction it says

because of the number of anonymous postings that poke fun at the government.

So you think they're ultimately going to be on  the right side of history the Chinese government?

I am 100%. For sure because nobody can stop this technology revolution.

It's 1987 in West Germany and a university professor has just got an email.

He's just received the first email from China.

But it isn't until 1994 that the internet  becomes available to the public

Like many of his compatriots Jiang is deeply influenced

an American writer whose book Future Shock predicts a super-industrial revolution

brought about by the moderation  and regulation of technology.

Computers combine facts to make new knowledge

at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.

But computers are expensive and  hardly anyone owns one

It costs around 25 yuan or $3 for an hour.

In 1995 a former English teacher called Jack Ma  heads to the U.S. on business.

While he's there he does a  web search for the word beer

He returns home and starts  an online yellow pages.

You don't make any money, you've got extraordinary claims

By 1999 the company Tencent releases OICQ  and Jack Ma creates Alibaba.

It's the Millennium and the unveiling  of the Golden Shield project

which includes a new surveillance system  made up of content-filtering firewalls.

The system becomes known around the world  as the Great Firewall of China.

It only takes a couple more years  for China to overtake the U.S.

Xi Jinping is elected general secretary of the Communist Party

Protecting the country's internet  from foreign influence.

Notable restrictions include Winnie the Pooh  because of comparisons made to Xi Jingping

It doesn't take long for controversial new laws which "ensure cybersecurity" to appear.

These grant the government unprecedented access to foreign companies

including their hardware and sensitive user data.

In 2018 Freedom House names China as the worst country in the world for online freedom.

But China soon starts exporting its to take on the Internet

to countries like Vietnam, Uganda and Tanzania.