Cracks in China's Great Firewall

The link is to a BBC News article in which a Chinese dissident, a film maker and a journalist give their thoughts on how the internet has changed, and is changing, China. I particularly like the quote from Liu Xiaobo (reproduced below).

Inside the great firewall of China
Liu Xiaobo has taken part in every political movement in China in the last 30 years including the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and the 1979 democracy wall movement.

He has been to prison twice and is banned from publishing any articles inside China.

"In China, where there's no freedom of speech, the role of the internet is much bigger than in Western countries which enjoy free speech.

Since the days of Mao Zedong, the authorities have created a very closed prison of information. There is only one voice. But with the appearance of the internet, cracks are appearing all over this prison.

The internet is the best gift god could send to China for the people of China to claim their rights.

In the 1990s, when I wrote an article and wanted to send it to the foreign media, I had to ride my bike across the city to ask foreign friends to fax it for me. I was lucky if I could send one article a month like that.

And I couldn't see anything I'd written because the Chinese media wouldn't publish it.

With the internet, I can e-mail my articles abroad as soon as they're finished. The internet has changed my life dramatically.

More and more people are using different software developed to bypass the authorities' control and to get access to the blocked websites.

Whatever method the government uses to block the internet, it's doomed to failure because of technology and because of people's desire for more and more information."