The great firewall of China : how to build and control an alternative version of the internet / James Griffiths.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-373) and index.

Introduction: Early warnings. Part one. Wall. Protests: solidarity from Hong Kong to Tiananmen -- Over the wall: China's first email and the rise of the online censor -- Nailing the jello: Chinese democracy and the Great Firewall -- Enemy at the gates: how fear of Falun Gong boosted the Firewall -- Searching for an opening: Google, Yahoo and Silicon Valley's moral failing in China -- Part two. Shield. Along came a spider: Lu Wei reins in the Chinese internet -- Peak traffic: Getting the Dalai Lama online -- Filtered: The firewall catches up with Da Cankao -- Jumping the wall: FreeGate, UltraSurf, and Falun Gong's fight against the censors -- Called to account: Silicon Valley's reckoning on Capitol Hill -- Part three. Sword. Uyghurs online: Ilham Tohti and the birth of the Uyghur internet -- Shutdown: how to take 20 million people offline -- Ghosts in the machine: Chinese hackers expand the Firewall's reach -- NoGuGe: The ignominious end of Google China -- The social network: Weibo and the last free-speech platform -- Gorillas in the mist: Exposing China's hackers to the world -- Part four. War. Caught: the death of the Uyghur internet -- Key opinion leader: how Chinese trolls go after dissidents overseas -- Root and stem: the internet is more vulnerable than you think -- The censor at the UN: China's undermining of global internet freedoms -- Sovereignty: when Xi Jinping came for the internet -- Friends in Moscow: the Great Firewall goes west -- Plane crash: China helps Russia bring Telegram to heel -- One app to rule them all: how WeChat opened up new frontiers of surveillance and censorship -- Buttocks: Uganda's internet blackouts follow Beijing's lead -- Epilogue: Silicon Valley won't save you.

Griffiths exposes the world's biggest and most sophisticated system of internet censorship. He describes how China did the impossible and built a controlled, warped version of the internet. Griffiths also explains how the vision of the web as a force for democracy and freedom failed, and the censors, far from retreating, are on the advance.