2026-brussee-reverse-great-firewall
Conceptualizing the reverse great firewall: cybersecurity and the logics of government geo-blocking in China
canonical link → · doi: 10.1093/cybsec/tyag005
Abstract
Studies the "reverse Great Firewall" — the growing pattern of Chinese
government websites blocking access from outside China. Develops a
conceptual framework for understanding outbound geo-blocking as a
cybersecurity practice rather than information control. Includes a
CSV dataset of Chinese government sites observed to block external
access (https://zenodo.org/records/18172145).
Team notes
Novel angle the rest of the corpus doesn't cover — the corpus has
extensive material on outbound circumvention from CN, but inbound
geo-blocking by CN itself is its own story (data sovereignty, signal
to outside observers, asymmetric internet topology). Worth a closer
read for anyone working on cross-border data flows or sanctions-
resilient infrastructure.