Opera and the Great Firewall of China

Opera was once a web browser heavily used by Chinese users – that is, the international version of the browser, due to a small error that allowed Chinese users to access Facebook and Twitter, essentially breaking the Chinese Firewall. Now it’d appear that China has forced Opera to make sure all the users can no longer do this – by forcing them to switch back to the Chinese version.

It’s a sad thing to think that the new superpower in the world is one in which demotes freedom of speech and sharing. It’s one that doesn’t want news, especially negative news about the politics in the country, and opinions of the country to be shared about. English businessmen inside China have found that they can’t post to Twitter at all – thanks to a lovely ban by China of any news sharing site, whether it be Facebook, Twitter or MySpace.

Personally, any kind of ban like this is ignorant. But China can’t see it that way. “The difference between the Chinese and the international version is that the former connects to compression servers within China…..benefits are higher speed, lower costs and an overall improved mobile web browsing experience,” Opera released in a statement, but they were not prepared to discuss the “background for this decision”.

China was incredibly likely to have direct involvement, as many people already speculate.