Leaked files show a Chinese company is exporting the Great Firewall’s censorship technology - The Globe and Mail 9/18/25, 10:43 AM The Great Firewall, China’s nationwide system of online censorship and surveillance, was developed by Chinese company Geedge Networks. The Globe, along with a group of other researchers and reporters, reviewed a leak of more than 100,000 internal documents linked to the company. WANG ZHAO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES In July, 2024, a group of Chinese technologists and researchers met at an office in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, to discuss efforts to stop internet users bypassing the Great Firewall, China’s vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus. Even by Chinese standards, internet controls in Xinjiang are intense, a legacy of a years-long crackdown by the authorities targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Preventing people from dodging these controls – to access banned websites or download secure messaging apps – was a key government priority, part of a “long-term struggle and technical confrontation” vital to nationwide “antiterrorism” efforts, according to minutes of the 2024 meeting. That record, reviewed by The Globe and Mail, is contained in a leak of more than 100,000 internal documents linked to Geedge Networks, a little-known Chinese company that has quietly assumed a key role in developing the Great Firewall and providing similar censorship capabilities to governments around the world, including in Myanmar, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan. The Globe – along with researchers at InterSecLab, Amnesty International, Justice For Myanmar, the Tor Project and reporters at Paper Trail Media – has spent months combing through the leak. The files offer a key insight not only into how Geedge exports cutting-edge censorship technology to its authoritarian clients, giving them capabilities they might not otherwise have, but also into the evolution of the Great Firewall itself. This includes solutions for filtering websites and apps, real-time online surveillance, throttling internet data to certain regions or enacting internet blackouts, identifying anonymous users by their online footprint, and blocking tools used to bypass censorship, including virtual private networks (VPNs). https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-leaked-files-show-a…de&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer Page 2 of 9