Collateral Freedom in China

OpenITP has just released a new report—Collateral Freedom—that studies the state of censorship circumvention tool usage in China today. From the report’s overview:

This report documents the experiences of 1,175 Chinese Internet users who are circumventing their country’s Internet censorship—and it carries a powerful message for developers and funders of censorship circumvention tools. We believe these results show an opportunity for the circumvention tech community to build stable, long term improvements in Internet freedom in China.

The circumvention tools that work best for these users are technologically diverse, but they are united by a shared political feature: the collateral cost of choosing to block them is prohibitive for China’s censors. Our survey respondents are relying not on tools that the Great Firewall can’t block, but rather on tools that the Chinese government does not want the Firewall to block. Internet freedom for these users is collateral freedom, built on technologies and platforms that the regime finds economically or politically indispensable.

Download the full report here: http://openitp.org/?q=node/44

The study was conducted by CITP alums David Robinson and me, along with Anne An. It was managed by OpenITP, and supported by Radio Free Asia’s Open Technology Fund. We wrote it primarily for developers and funders of censorship circumvention technology projects, but it is also designed to be accessible for non-technical policymakers who are interested in Internet freedom, and for China specialists without technology background.