... excellent ... The detailed historical picture that he draws of the Chinese authorities’ approach to the online world over the last three decades is nonetheless fascinating and eye-opening ... As a China specialist, he travels to Beijing, Hong Kong and elsewhere to interview brave individuals, and draws a compellingly atmospheric picture of modern arguments about control and self-determination, and even the dangerous politics of drop-down menus in web-forms ... This is an exciting and sobering account of how freedom, which was never in the internet code in the first place, can be effectively curtailed with the tools that were supposed to liberate us.

Griffiths stitches events and issues, most of which are—individually—reasonably well-known, into a coherent narrative. The result is a readable, well-documented history of the internet in China ... The book’s strength is in Griffiths’s measured tone—this is no polemic—and general even-handedness. He is as critical—more despairing than scathing—of the American tech industry as he is of Chinese government policy and notes that much of the technical apparatus used to enforce China’s restrictive version of the Internet was supplied, at least initially, by American firms. Griffiths writes in a fluent, storytelling style, making use of the journalistic-style vignettes that now seem de rigueur in books that might otherwise purport to be analytical. These add color if not necessarily evidence; at least Griffiths does it well. The technical passages on, for example, the various international organizations that struggle for international control over the internet or how domain name routing works, are clear and to the point. The book is however perhaps longer than it need be ... But stylistic pros and cons aside, The Great Firewall of China’s recapitulation of the history, and discussion of how many of the best-laid plans went awry, is a good jumping-off place for, if one likes, discussion of the 'larger issues' ... In the end, it seems Griffiths sees the 'Great Firewall of China' more as a lesson about the internet itself than a story about China per se.

Why did so many fail to anticipate that the Communist Party would extend its control over cyberspace as it had over physical space? And how, exactly, has the Chinese government created its own heavily surveilled domestic intranet? In The Great Firewall of China, James Griffiths traces the development of Chinese cyberauthoritarianism and censorship from the 1990s to the present. In his useful but alarming account, Mr. Griffiths, a journalist for CNN based in Hong Kong, explains why the Communist Party came to focus on internet control and how the pieces of the Great Firewall function.

The thesis is convincing ... The Great Firewall of China is threaded with social history narratives, which provide a human meaning to the language of ISPs, DDoSs and SORMs that form the backbone of censorship apparatus ... [Griffiths] provides a larger-scale analysis than most other studies of the Great Firewall have offered, situating China’s policy in the global debate about whether the United States or the United Nations should control the internet ... it is clear that Griffiths is as skeptical of U.S. companies’ moralistic claims as he is critical of China’s dogmatic regime.

Those concerned about digital rights in the west would do well to heed Griffiths’ warnings that China’s system of internet censorship is not for internal consumption only but is being exported as part of a campaign by Beijing to legitimise its approach to the world ... Griffiths explains a technical subject — Beijing’s internet controls — through the lens of Chinese politics and the logic of social movements. Chapters on tech companies and regulation are interleaved with deeply moving stories of the accidental activists who became the victims of China’s censors: Falun Gong mystics, satirical cartoonists and Uighur Muslims, among many ... In a slightly rushed epilogue, Griffiths concludes that the capitalists of 'Silicon Valley won’t save you', but nor can western governments (sometimes hypocritically) propounding the virtues of a free internet abroad, given the suspicion that governments such as China’s attach to anything the US defends.

Controlling the Internet was supposed to be as hopeless as nailing Jell-O to the wall, as U.S. President Bill Clinton said, but in this vividly reported narrative, Griffiths tells exactly when and how China achieved it. Chinese dissidents, the U.S. government, and Internet giants went up against the Chinese state—and lost ... Griffiths condemns the 'moral failing' of Silicon Valley firms and despairs that the censors are on the advance.'

... a riveting read, revealing the questionable acts of states and corporations as they vie to shape the internet to their own ends. And Griffiths has an eye for the detail that brings anecdotes to life. Many of his stories show how offline and online lives merge in bizarre ways ... Griffiths is good at calling out the hypocrisy of tech companies, including Google and Twitter, that espouse one ideology in Silicon Valley and another when talking to oppressive regimes.

... documents the history of the Chinese internet through a series of 25 cameos, drawing in the reader through narratives grounded in individual experience. [Griffiths] brings to bear his journalistic skills, both in engaging storytelling and in careful (well-footnoted) research. His special interest is in censorship and human rights, leading him to track down the accounts of (and often personally interview) numerous dissidents and dissenters ... Despite the 'How to build and control an alternative version of the internet' subtitle, the book actually reports not on how but on what happens when you do. It is a cautionary tale for us all because—not just in China, but worldwide—more control seems to be the inexorable direction of travel: control of the internet and, with it, control of the citizens.

... documents the history of the Chinese internet through a series of 25 cameos, drawing in the reader through narratives grounded in individual experience. [Griffiths] brings to bear his journalistic skills, both in engaging storytelling and in careful (well-footnoted) research. His special interest is in censorship and human rights, leading him to track down the accounts of (and often personally interview) numerous dissidents and dissenters ... Despite the 'How to build and control an alternative version of the internet' subtitle, the book actually reports not on how but on what happens when you do. It is a cautionary tale for us all because—not just in China, but worldwide—more control seems to be the inexorable direction of travel: control of the internet and, with it, control of the citizens.

Griffiths’s strengths are as a reporter: he has an eye for character and writes with impartial rigour. But although he effectively details how China built its alternative internet, he fails to address some of the deeper questions its panopticon poses. The meaning of privacy and freedom – for Chinese citizens living with an authoritarian internet regime, or for citizens elsewhere under surveillance capitalism – is left unexplored ... In a cursory epilogue, Griffiths writes that the path beyond Silicon Valley’s hollow libertarianism or China’s state censorship is a publicly owned internet freed from 'the pursuit of profit or top-down control'. In an age where life is increasingly conducted online, his conclusion feels more urgent than ever.