Recently, global internet traffic rankings show that the influence of the internet company Baidu is limited to the Chinese-speaking world, which only accounts for a tiny 1.3% share of the internet. Experts believe that due to the blockade of the Great Firewall, domestic residents lack information and rely on toxic information provided by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
A recent article titled “The Dilemma of Chinese Information Ecosystem Seen from Global Traffic Rankings” was published on the WeChat public account “Science and Truth,” comparing the content volume of Chinese and English in the internet world, revealing a harsh truth: every Chinese netizen essentially lives in a “Truman World” filtered three times. The so-called “vast amount of information” people encounter is just a drop in the vast ocean of knowledge.
The article was quickly deleted by the WeChat platform but archived by the China Digital Era 404 Library.
According to Similarweb’s ranking, as of March 1, 2025, the top ten global traffic platforms are Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X Platform, WhatsApp, ChatGTP, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Yahoo.
The data shows that the English world creates 60% of global internet content, while Chinese information contributes only a tiny 1.3% share. Wikipedia, as the world’s largest knowledge sharing platform, has 15 times more English entries than Chinese.
The contrast of search engines is particularly striking: Google dominates global information distribution with 85.3 billion monthly visits, while Baidu, although dominant in the Chinese market, has limited international influence confined to the Chinese-speaking world.
The article points out that while global netizens use Google to search for knowledge, watch videos on YouTube, and share life on Facebook, Chinese internet users are trapped in a digital island constructed by Baidu (15th place), Taobao (fell out of the top 100), and WeChat.
The seemingly brilliant traffic data of Chinese internet companies actually reveals a structural crisis. This “internal prosperity” reflects a fatal flaw in China’s internet economy: excessive reliance on a closed market, lacking real global competitiveness.
Independent scholar Wu Zuolai, in an interview with Epoch Times, analyzed that the total amount of Chinese information uploaded to the international internet accounts for a very small proportion due to various reasons. One reason being the dominance of the English civilization globally, and another being the CCP’s repression, censorship, deletion, surveillance, and self-censorship regarding the internet. With a lack of information domestically, Chinese resources’ contribution to world civilization will decrease.
He explained that after World War II, the mainstream culture of the world should be the English civilization, guiding contemporary mainstream culture, which is an undeniable fact. To enter the mainstream, any country must translate its language into English, and academic research, paper publications, and the total amount of English content are significant. Many students come to the United States to study, which shows the educational imbalance.
Comparatively, Chinese civilization has a smaller total quantity of ancient texts and contemporary creations compared to the English world, and the severe fact is that despite China once opening up the internet, the CCP quickly blocked it with the Great Firewall. Much content published by Chinese individuals cannot be searched for on the international internet.
“My millions of words published on Chinese blogs have been mostly deleted,” Wu Zuolai said, noting that the already minimal Chinese content is further reduced by CCP censorship, surveillance, and firewall restrictions. This diminishes Chinese contributions to the global internet significantly.
“We used to have several hundred or even a thousand people responsible for deletion on every blog site. Production here, deletion there, leading to a huge contrast, actually a satire on the Communist Party,” he said.
Recently, at the shareholder meeting of Gree Electric Appliances, Chairwoman Dong Mingzhu stated that returnees might be spies, saying, “We absolutely don’t need returnees, only domestically cultivated talents in universities,” causing a stir in public opinion and highlighting the shrinking openness of Chinese entrepreneurs.
Wu Zuolai revealed that China’s internet companies thrive on traffic data but face structural crises. This “internal prosperity” reflects a fatal flaw in China’s internet economy: excessive reliance on a closed market, lack of real global competitiveness.
In light of the recent U.S.-China trade war negotiations, it is evident that the CCP is unwilling to disengage from trade with the U.S. but eagerly disconnects from the world in information exchange. Google was forced to exit China back in 2010, and Chinese students are unable to access their overseas universities’ websites within the country.
When China joined the World Trade Organization, promises were made to open up the banking and financial sectors as well as the internet and cultural field, but none have been fulfilled as the Great Firewall continues to rise. The CCP can only gain the most U.S. dollars in this unequal trade, using it to expand its global influence through initiatives like “One Belt, One Road” and United Front work, enhancing its global impact.
In response to the situation, Liu Dongling, one of the initiators of the Anti-Firewall Movement, stated in an interview with Epoch Times that the CCP’s digital high wall has led many to live in a highly constructed and controlled environment, oblivious to their surroundings. For ordinary netizens, without enough awareness to seek information from a broader perspective, they remain in a closed and passively shaped cognitive space.
As a mother of two children, she mentioned that her children regularly use Khan Academy, a website that is also banned in China due to its scientific and academic freedom content. The widespread internet censorship in China involves direct administrative intervention in websites and content deemed “inappropriate.”
“The CCP uses the ‘digital high wall’ to maintain its rule and ideology, significantly damaging freedom of expression principles from a global perspective, limiting cultural exchange and knowledge sharing, leading to an imbalance in global information flow and knowledge sharing, restricting opportunities for Chinese users to access broader and more diverse information,” she said.
Liu Dongling believes that breaking through the Great Firewall is not just a technical act but a willful awakening, a leap from information freedom to physical freedom. She urges starting at the family level to assist children in bypassing the firewall, dismantling the CCP’s “firewall” of information and ideology, to save China’s future generation.
It is worth noting that while both China and the U.S. are seeking negotiations in the recent trade war, the CCP appears hesitant to sever ties with the U.S. in trade but is willing to detach from the world in terms of information exchange. Wu Zuolai believes that China failed to fulfill promises made upon entering the WTO, including opening up in areas like banking, finance, and the internet. The Great Firewall continues to grow, inhibiting information flow and knowledge exchange on a global scale.