Did you know that the Chinese government has set up a completely new internet, somewhat derisively called “The Great Firewall of China” after the famous actual brick and mortar Great Wall of China? I personally did not know of this at all, so maybe it is old news, or maybe you are like me and it is brand new news…News is where you find it, after all…

The whole purpose of this “Great Firewall’ is to censor any Chinese dissidents who dare to stir up any unrest in their country and to block any of the regular internet broadcasts like face book, you tube, twitter, or anything the rigid Chinese autocracy deems dangerous to it’s rigid, autocratic domain….

According to my Google sources: “Soon after China tip-toed onto the Internet in the late 1980s, it laid down the foundation of the Great Firewall but critics asserted that an Internet with Chinese characteristics would be no Internet at all.”

Then U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that “liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem” and that any attempt to control the Internet in China would be “like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”Well folks, it’s now 2015 and China has done the impossible.It’s nailed the Jell-O. China has proven it can have its Great Firewall and enjoy great prosperity too.”

These sources go on to say that: “Currently home to the world’s largest Internet market, China is also home to some of the world’s most valuable Internet companies including e-commerce giant Alibaba and Tencent, now estimated to be worth $66.1 billion.The government has fostered the development of the Internet by offering incentives for local entrepreneurs while building walls to keep big Western rivals out.

The ban on Western social media sites like YouTube and Facebook has also given home court advantage to China’s own Internet stars like Youku and WeChat. And respecting the strict rules that govern China’s Internet has not gotten in the way of innovation as Chinese tech developers reinterpret existing business models and build out new mobile apps.

“From Beijing’s perspective, there’s this fear that if we open up the Internet then it will be chaos. So if the cost is good-enough or almost-good-enough innovation… It seems like a pretty straight forward equation from the perspective of the policymakers.”And there are signs the Great Firewall is expanding its reach. The Chinese like to keep their internal crackdowns on dissidents, of which there are many, private and in house….From the Tiamen Square Anniversary crackdown to the Free Tibet movements and various other social protests are perceived as deadly serious and incendiary threats to the autocratic government of Chinese President Xi Jinping….

Last week, the Chinese and English news websites of Reuters news agency became inaccessible in China, joining a number of foreign media destinations that are barred online in China.

And it get worse!”You can filter out keywords, you can filter by URL, you can block or poison DNS (domain name system), and increasingly now they identify VPNs,” says Tsui.

“The problem is that it’s decided on a national level by the government,” he adds.”It’s this attitude that ‘father knows best.'”And that “father” would be Lu Wei, the so-called Internet czar of China who was recently photographed smiling at Mark Zuckerberg’s desk during a visit at Facebook’s headquarters in California.”

Here is some technical stuff on how they can and have achieved this to me, revolutionary breakthrough in controlling the internet: “You can filter out keywords, you can filter by URL, you can block or poison DNS (domain name system), and increasingly now they identify VPNs,” says Tsui.”The problem is that it’s decided on a national level by the government,” he adds. “It’s this attitude that ‘father knows best.”

“Lu Wei is really pushing this ‘Internet sovereignty’ model, where we can control the information, we can control the Internet within our borders and we will use our model,” says Roseann Rife, the East Asia research director of Amnesty International.”More than that, the Chinese authorities are pushing this as a model for the globe and they are going to get a lot of acceptance or buy-in from a lot of different countries.”

This is where the real danger lies, in my opinion..It is already too late to do anything about it in China, barring the sudden appearance of a new wave of counter revolutionary hackers, but China’s success in censoring the internet will surely appeal to all the fascist nation states in the world. Given all the political and religious unrest and uncertainty and open warfare around the globe, this is almost a given…If it CAN happen, it WILL happen…Sort of like Murphy’s law…

“Amnesty International fears the Great Firewall could become the next great export from China.”It would be a very attractive model for instance for Russia, for Egypt, or for other states,” Rife says. “It would be obviously in China’s interest for other people and other nation states to agree with them and their interpretation of Internet sovereignty.”

And instead of backing away, Western onlookers may be nodding their heads in agreement. Last year, the U.S.-based LinkedIn decided to censor some content on its Chinese site. And fear is mounting that Zuckerberg’s recent charm offensive with Lu Wei reflects Facebook’s desire to do whatever it takes to crack the China market.

So would global Internet users rise up against a Facebook that censors its posts and monitors its users to comply with local laws in China? It’s unlikely, says Bishop. “I actually think most users don’t care.” “At the end of the day, they’re not going to give up Facebook because Facebook is operating differently in China.”A Facebook that fits the firewall, and fortune at the expense of freedom. That is precisely China’s vision of how the Internet should be.”

Wow! There you have it…Chinese citizens can utilize social dating sites of their own, listen to their own government censored news, get the weather and travel apps like we use, watch streaming government approved entertainment, in fact all of the features we here in America and the rest of the free world enjoy…But the heavy hand of censorship is now able to block any dissenting viewpoints, and apparently as a sovereign nation there is nothing illegal about what they are doing within their own national borders....

Is there anything wrong in China doing this? Apparently not….We have. all of us, let the internet genie out of the bottle, and there is no putting it back!