Over the last decade, the digitalization of China has been running together with the general growth of the country’s economy. The local government has endeavored to provide the country with a modern telecommunication infrastructure and to support the diffusion of mobile technology. Today the number of Chinese net citizens is not far away from reaching 600 million users.
However, the censorship system which has always affected the flow of information and content within this country seems not to weaken. Despite the Internet is becoming more and more embedded in people’s everyday life, the censorship demonstrates a formidable resilience to adapt to the new platforms made available by this revolutionary tool. A technologic blocking and filtering effort combined with the continuous monitoring and controlling of users’ virtual activities makes the best of the so-called ‘Great Firewall’: a censorship system that would not be possible without the collaboration of the population itself and its willingness to actively practice self-censorship and self-restraint