Censorship provokes cracks in China's Great Firewall

China has unveiled tighter Internet controls, legalising the deletion of posts or pages which are deemed to contain "illegal" information and requiring service providers to hand over such information to the authorities for punishment. The rules signal that the new leadership headed by Communist Party chief Xi Jinping will continue muzzling the often scathing, raucous online chatter in a country where the Internet off

Hundreds of Chinese have flooded US President Barack Obama's Google+ page, apparently taking advantage of a glitch in China's censorship system to post about human rights and green cards.Google+ -- the US Internet giant's social networking site -- has been unavailable in China since it was launched last year, apparently blocked by the nation's strict censorship system, dubbed "the Great Firewall of China."But over the past few days, Chinese netizens say they have unexpectedly managed to get onto the site, and have decided to concentrate their presence on Obama's page.

International golf stars, spectators and media at the World Cup on the southern Chinese island of Hainan are enjoying uncensored Internet access denied to 1.3 billion Chinese.China's communist leaders maintain strict control over what the country's huge online population can see, blocking sensitive content as part of a vast censorship system known as the Great Firewall.But the Hong Kong brothers who own the five-star Mission Hills golf complex in Hainan have used their close ties with Beijing to guarantee unprecedented open service during the November 23-27 event.

Widely vilified in his homeland, Fang Binxing, in an English-language newspaper interview, defends his creation and says he regularly uses otherwise forbidden software to get around the Internet blockade he helped set up.The man known as the father of the so-called Great Firewall of China is defending his invention, which blocks access to hundreds of thousands of foreign websites, and admits to owning software he uses to evade the very censorship he helped create.

China may be a massive potential market for search engine companies, but Google may pull out of the country, in a row over censorship. Google has cried foul following hacking attacks on the email accounts of several Chinese dissidents, which the company says originated in China. Google has since said that it will no longer comply with Chinese government censorship regulations, risking its future in the country but winning the admiration of many of China's internet users or so-called "netizens".

Chinese netizens have become obsessed with a Weibo account that appears to show the absurdly fabulous life of a young woman in Shenzhen, which we first read about on ChinaSmack.

While the US is caught in a rancorous debate over allowing the government to define just what was and wasn't meant by the Second amendment, and how best to limit it and give the government even more powers, China is more focused on its version of the First.