July 2013

This special report is based on the 2013 China chapter of Freedom House’’s annual Freedom on the Net survey. As the home of one of the most systematically controlled and monitored online environments in the world, China will no doubt retain its place among countries where Freedom House categorizes the Internet as Not Free. As the “Freedom on the Net 2012” survey noted, China increasingly serves as an incubator for sophisticated new types of Internet restrictions, providing a model for other authoritarian countries. Like all Freedom on the Net narratives, this report offers a comprehensive examination of three aspects of internet freedom: What prevents users from getting online? What can Internet users say and do? What are the repercussions for online activity?

The Chinese Communist Party’’s commitment to curtailing Internet freedom was unwavering over the course of the leadership change that took place during the coverage period for this report, May 1, 2012, to April 30, 2013. If anything, the high-level meetings at which the handover was announced served as catalysts for tighter controls on content, measures to deliberately slow Internet traffic, and intensified harassment of dissidents, as the party’’s propaganda and security agencies worked to eliminate any nascent political challenge. The Internet restrictions Freedom House documented this year were faster and more nuanced than ever before.