Great firewall of China

1.  More than 20 million people in China depend on cafes like this one in central Shanghai to use the internet.

2.  All customers must register with identity documents, ensuring that the country's internet police force - alleged to be 30,000-strong - can track them down easily.

3.  Beijing says it is concerned about young people accessing pornographic or violent sites. Human rights groups say that it is trying to silence critics.

4.  The rosy-eyed view of many western theorists in the 80s and 90s was that introducing market forces would automatically lead to radical political change.

5.  But things may not be as bad as they seem, and US claims of "hundreds of thousands" of sites being blocked may be an exaggeration.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1349348,00.html