Golden Shield Project

The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: ; pinyin: jīndùn gōngchéng), a major part of which is the Great Firewall of China (Chinese: ; pinyin: fánghuǒ chángchéng), is a censorship and surveillance project that blocks potentially unfavorable incoming data from foreign countries. It is operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the government of China. The project was initiated in 1998 and began operations in November 2003. It has also seemingly been used to attack international web sites using Man-on-the-side DDoS, for example GitHub on 2015/03/28.

The political and ideological background of the Golden Shield Project is considered to be one of Deng Xiaoping’s favorite sayings in the early 1980s: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in." (Chinese: 打开窗户，新鲜空气和苍蝇就会一起进来。; pinyin: Dǎkāi chuānghù, xīnxiān kōngqì hé cāngying jiù huì yìqǐ jìnlái.) The saying is related to a period of the economic reform of China that became known as the "socialist market economy". Superseding the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution, the reform led China towards a market economy and opened up the market for foreign investors. Nonetheless, despite the economic freedom, values and political ideas of the Communist Party of China have had to be protected by "swatting flies" of other unwanted ideologies.

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