China boasts of having the world’s largest population of internet users: 1.125 billion by the end of 2025, according to official figures. But as one joke has it, the Great Firewall – blocking not only politically sensitive material but also global tech firms such as Google and Meta – has produced what looks more like the world’s largest intranet.
Beijing is not an anomaly, but a pioneer. Its extraordinary investment in the apparatus of “cyber sovereignty” – others would call it censorship and repression – is guiding other authoritarian countries. A realm defined by connection is fragmenting not just from commercial greed and filter bubbles but due to state fiat, birthing the splinternet.
