Club Lunch- China’s War on the Internet: How the West Lost the Web

Once little more than a glorified porn filter, China’s “Great Firewall” has evolved into the most sophisticated system of online censorship in the world. Even as the Chinese internet grows and online businesses thrive, speech is controlled, dissent is quashed, and any attempts to organise outside the official Communist Party are quickly stamped out. But the effects of the Great Firewall are not confined to China itself. More and more, China is threatening global internet freedoms as it seeks to shore up its censorship regime.

James Griffiths has reported from Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, South Korea, and Australia. He is the author of “The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet.” Griffiths is currently a senior producer at CNN International. Before that he was an editor at the South China Morning Post, and a China-based contributor to The Atlantic, Global Post, That’s Shanghai and the Daily Beast.