Jason Ng from Kenengba finished a survey on the background of Chinese Internet users who use circumvention tools for crossing over the Great Fire Wall. He managed to collect 5300 data in 10 days from Twitter, 163 micro blog, Tencent mirco blog, Renren.com and his own blog. Here is his initial findings:

1. Gender: 92% is male and only 8% is female

2. Education background: The majority has high education background – 73% has university degree, 11% has master degree, 9% has high school education, 4% has primary education, 2% has doctoral degree and 2% has middle school education.

3. Age distribution – 77% is between 19-28 year old.

4. Occupation – The majority is student – 49.34%, followed by IT professional (around 20%) and then finance sector (3.55%) and freelance (3.11%).

5. Circumvention tool – The majority (more than 70%) use circumvention tools such as Freegate, Puff and Ultra Surf, followed by Proxy, SSH and VPN. 15% use other methods, such as GAppProxy.

6. Frequency – 2/3 of the user crosses over the wall everyday, 17% 1-3 times a week, 8% every alternative day.

7. Spending – 88% spends less than 10 yuan on circumvention tool, 10% spends 10-50 yuan.

8. History – 52% of the users have less than 3 year experience in using the circumvention tool. 2.24% has 9 year experience which means since 1998 when the golden shield project launched.

9. Reason – 80% wants to access basic Internet services such as Google. 75% wants to access social media websites such as Twitter. 72% gets access to foreign media. 60% visits entertainment websites such as Youtube and 30% wants to access adult websites.

10. Spreading words – 85% has taught their friends how to use circumvention tools.

11. Attitude towards the GFW – 38% believes that the GFW should be removed and around 50% suggest a more transparent and clearer regulation on Internet censorship.

12. How they get to know the existence of GFW – 37% gets the information from blog, 28% from search engine and 19% from forum.

For full Chinese report please visit Kenengba