The December issue of Far Eastern Economic Review has an article in Internet censorship; how the filtering is done, which western companies are supplying the technology, as well as a grass-roots effort to try to bypass the filter.

An interesting passage in the article deals with the difference in censorship of local and foreign language sources:

The ONI [OpenNet Initiave - an organization mapping Internet censorship] has also documented a more concentrated effort among states to target content in local languages, such as Vietnamese, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi. […] Although determining the motivation for such variation is difficult, one might surmise that political authorities may want to target that web content which hits closest to home while leaving English speaking visitors to the country (e.g., journalists, Western human-rights activists) with the impression that censorship is rare.

It is indeed very easy to forget the censorship when you can reach most any English language web site you want to (Wikipedia being a notable exception). You simply don’t see it. It’s sometimes good to get a reminder.

(The Economist also recently published an article on the subject, with a few more examples of methods to bypass the filter.)