Big regional disparities in the 'great firewall' of China

China's authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country's internet censorship regime in the central province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country.

- Amy Hawkins

A research paper published this month by the Great Firewall Report, an internet censorship monitoring platform, found that internet users in Henan, one of China's most populous provinces, were denied access, on average, to five times more websites than a typical Chinese internet user between November 2023 and March 2025.

"Our work documents an alarming sign of regional censorship emerging in China," said the researchers, who include authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Stanford University.

China has the world's most sophisticated and extensive internet censorship regime. Internet users cannot access most western news websites or social media platforms, including services provided by Google, Wikipedia and Meta.

Within what has been dubbed the "great firewall", online content is monitored and censored by a mixture of government authorities and private companies complying with regulations that require them to delete any content considered "sensitive".