The Great Firewall is just mind-bogglingly big, repressing freedom of speech and information for over 800 million Chinese internet users every year. The Great Firewall is so big that it’s worth asking: how did the Chinese manage to build it in the first place?
Twenty years ago, our infosec technology was much less advanced than it is today. China was a second-rate technology power, not even comparable to their position today. Most of all, a firewall like the one they proposed had never existed before, or for that matter since. How, then, did they pull it off?