By Star Chang, posted Jun 22, 2011 at 12:36 PM, 1,254 views,

China Builds Internet Special Region With No Firewall Filter (video)

China currently has the world’s largest Internet population, and the country has invested heavily in censoring sensitive web content. The action behind this is always define as to prevent civil unrest from occurring, thus provide stable and harmonious to the country. The Great Firewall of China, also known as ‘GFW’ in short, is the network system which prevent millions of Chinese internet users to visit mainstream websites like Facebook and Twitter. And now to surprise everyone, China will plan to build a Special Administrative Region which is GFW free, and Internet could be connected without monitoring! But this place is only strictly to be used by foreigners, no local Chinese or mainland enterprises are allowed, and the most interesting part is, the special region is set up to establish a cloud processing data center…

According to Southern Weekend report, the Special Administrative Region is located at Chongqing, a major city in Southwest China. The place will take up an area of 10 square kilometers and construction is under progress. The province’s governments plan to build a ‘Internet Cloud Zone’ in order to gain market share in cloud computing. The total investment for the first phase of development is estimated at around RMB 1 billion (US$150 million). The zone will be named as ‘cloud SAR’ (cloud Special Administrative Region), and it is isolated from the mainland network via a dedicated fiber optic cable without going through the Great Firewall of China. Foreign investors can carry out offshore operations in the SAR without data checking by the Chinese authorities. They can even obtain telecommunications and data business license, and hold up to a 100% company shares.

Chinese citizens are not allowed to enter the cloud SAR, and the working employees will have to pass through strict security checks before entering their working place. The zone will be surrounded by fence covered with plants, and will be monitored with security cameras. Thus, getting into the place might be as difficult as getting into the US White House. About thirty thousand servers will be installed and hidden inside the buildings, it will operate 24 hours a day, vast amounts of data will be processed and exchanged here. The Government and authorities will ensure those data from SAR will only be allowed to get in, process and get out, but not going out to the China’s mainland network.

Cloud computing is the next big thing in IT industries. (just ask Steve Jobs and you will know). The current cloud data processing for Europe and US is mainly located in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. China is excluded from the cloud computing business due to the restrictions on internet access. To grab this business opportunity, the Chinese Government has approved to set up a Special Administrative Region in Chongqing, in order to build an international data center hub. The development has already attracted several IT companies like HP and Cisco, willing to join an alliance, and Singapore Pacnet will be the first foreign telecom company to operate inside the cloud SAR.

Our thoughts…

We believe the establish of this cloud SAR will boost up the economic growth in Chongqing, and the local authorities will benefit, but not Chinese internet users. Only foreigners who are working inside the special zone will able to surf the Internet freely. Furthermore, this type of isolation will only cause China to stay far behind on information’s flow, and local people will not be provided any form of cloud services to connect with the outside world. We guess the future iCloud service from Apple will not be present in China, and millions of Chinese internet users will be continued to restrict on Internet access. No Facebook, no Twitter, no YouTube, GFW will still be the biggest obstacle for all Chinese netizens.

After Southern Weekend has reported on the story, the online version of the news has been deleted without any reasons. This is the printed version (in Chinese) we have here. And not to forget, Southern Weekend is the newspaper who had the breaking news last year on the undercover story in Foxconn’s hell factory.

Source: Southern Weekend via Apple Daily, NTDTV, Pacnet