b/c you're kinda missing the point of the firewall First all 99% of the Chinese internet content is hosted domestically - so unless a Chinese person is fluent

b/c you're kinda missing the point of the firewall First all 99% of the Chinese internet content is hosted domestically - so unless a Chinese person is fluent in english it's harder to access foreign information, and they have their own cat videos anyways The goal really is to have no institutions that rival the government for organizing people and disseminating information. You can always get around the firewall, and news sites are actually accessible - even sometimes facebook will work from China. The system isn't perfect, but the authorities are happy if at the end of the day people don't have twitter/facebook/G+ accounts, they don't visit foreign sites regularly b/c they've been made unreliable, and they end up in domestic forums where things can be monitored and contained. When authorities see the Arab Spring Twitter revolution they're probably thinking "yeaaahhh... that's exactly what we want to avoid. No foreign social media please"