China Brief (Jamestown Foundation) published this month a joint article by Yun-Ting Cai, DSET Deputy Director of the Data Analysis Program, and Athena Tong, a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo’s RCAST, titled “Internet Censorship Tools Exported Along Belt and Road.” The piece issues a grave warning regarding China’s replication of its authoritarian model of internet governance abroad through the export of censorship technology products.
Cai and Tong ground their analysis in what has been described as the largest leak of Great Firewall–related documents to date, stemming from a September 2025 breach at Geedge (積至)—a firm founded by Fang Binxing, often dubbed the “father of China’s Great Firewall.” The leaked files not only illuminate Geedge’s ties to the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ MESA Laboratory, but also indicate that surveillance capabilities have been commercialized and exported to Belt and Road partner countries, including Ethiopia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Kazakhstan.
The article argues that these transfers are enabled through the “Digital Silk Road,” embedding Chinese-developed monitoring and censorship functions into the core infrastructure of partner states. It further notes that this trajectory aligns with Beijing’s strategic objectives of advancing “Digital China” and building China into a “cyber power.”
Crucially, the article cautions that exporting Great Firewall–style technologies carries significant normative consequences. When governments such as those in Myanmar or Ethiopia deploy Geedge’s deep packet inspection (DPI) tools—capable of monitoring traffic and disrupting circumvention services like VPNs—they acquire more than a technical product; they may also internalize a Beijing-aligned conception of what “normal” internet governance entails.
The authors also highlight Geedge’s maintenance of shared, cross-border databases that aggregate information on VPN and other circumvention nodes in near real time. As a result, a circumvention endpoint exposed in one country can be rapidly added to blocklists elsewhere, effectively positioning each client as both a consumer and a contributor to a broader censorship and threat-intelligence ecosystem.
Finally, the article raises legal and ethical concerns that Geedge products reportedly rely heavily on commercial software development kits (SDKs) and open-source components to enable large-scale surveillance and potential data misuse.
The authors conclude that Geedge’s overseas footprint represents an extension of China’s digital strategy to consolidate global influence. They note that the deployment of Chinese censorship platforms in countries such as Myanmar and Pakistan has drawn criticism from human rights organizations, which warn these tools could be used to target activists, journalists, and dissidents—particularly in the absence of safeguards to prevent state overreach and abuse.
