A senior Chinese official has criticised the country's strict internet censorship laws. According to Luo Fuhe from the Chinese government's advisory board, the highly sophisticated and far reaching 'great firewall' is damaging the country's economic and scientific progress. Recently, China was named the worst “abuser of internet freedom” on Earth, in a report from Freedom House, due to the frequency in which it bans websites and deletes comments on social media. Luo pointed out that some Chinese researchers have to use software to overcome the firewall to complete their work, something which he said was “not normal”. He added that he hoped to be able to relax certain laws to allow access to sites needed for scientific purposes. However, this would go against China's support for “internet sovereignty”, which allows countries to police exactly what can enter their borders online.Â
