The French newspaper "Le Monde" has published, last February 19, an interesting article entitled: "China: towards a great schism of the Internet?". Hubert Guillaud, chief editor of InternetActu.net and one of the founders of the French New generalation Internet Foundation, explains how China is changing Internet by creating a new network with a new architecture. With the same ambition than before: to control what chinese people are reading.
Since more than three years, Chinese DNS are not anymore under Icann control. The official reason is to allow Chinese people to enter a website address with ideograms instead using latin alphabet. Chinese webusers are focused on something like a subnet, disconnected from Internet and directly controlled by Beijing. This schism has been accompanied by a massive changeover to the new IPv6 Internet standard in only six months.
Until now, Chinese authorities attempted to put a sort of firewall between the country and the rest of the world. But with this new architecture, those who use Chinese characters are going to a part of international websites, previously monitored, checked and brought back online by the authorities.
The risk is to see two separate Internet networks, drawing on other totalitarian countries to follow the same path.
After the crisis between Google and Beijing, this article reminds that communication networks have always been, for States, a necessity: to know before others was a vital asset to enemy. Since Sun Tsu information, more than money, is the sinews of war.
- Read the article (in French)
