"According to abcnews.com, an army of self described hacktivists are engaged in a kind of technological arms race, inventing software and using other tactics to allow ordinary Chinese to beat the "Great Firewall of China" and access information on sensitive subjects such as Chinese human rights and Tibet, the province where pro-independence sentiment has boiled over in recent months."
China is infamous for is strict and private media and how censored the internet is in China. According to wikipedia.com, China has been censored since the 1980's. China and many other Asian countries are known to be private and they feel if their internet and press is open many other countries they might by nosy and spy on China.
In the article China has the world's "most sophisticated" Internet filtering system, according to the OpenNet Initiative, an academic cooperative that tracks censorship issues. Also China is not as strict as Russia or North Korea in that it allows its citizens to use the internet but it regulates what they can or cannot view.
Also the punishment for breaking censorship rules can be fines or jail time depending on the crime. The most basic tool at the Chinese government's disposal — and, perhaps, the one most easily circumvented by dissidents — is to ban access within China to websites