They say that you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon. Well from there you could certainly experience another wonder: the Great Firewall of China.
This is the huge barrier the Chinese government has built to protect itself not from the hoards of Mongolian marauders, but from the hoards of western democracy campaigners. All internet and email has to filter through this mighty dam to ensure that it is pure of thought and ideology.
Of course every government longs for this controlling power - just look at the measures frequently proposed in our own Parliament. However it is unbelievably expensive - and cumbersome. The Chinese call it The Golden Shield and it's estimated that as many as two million police are involved in the project. What that would do to the budget blow-out.
Naturally, Chinese computer enthusiasts devote enormous time and energy to finding ways around this colossus. They have a constant cat and mouse game with the authorities, making a hole and getting full use of it before it is found and blocked up.
However, all this censorship has not impeded the paths of profit. The world's greatest data companies see billions of dollars in trade, and huge Chinese companies have a world market to serve.
So, early next year Twitter is opening its Hong Kong office, devoted to China business even though it is banished from the land. Google already has a sales office, in a ten-storey headquarters in Beijing. Facebook has just rented its own offices in Beijing, with views of the Forbidden City.
Which is quite appropriate, because the social activities of these world giants are mired in the quagmire of Chinese censorship.
That Golden Shield has seen some mighty stoushes. Google especially has spent ten years in a market where they once had 36 per cent - that has dropped to 1.7 per cent. The government has repeatedly blocked the search engine, both in English and Chinese. You'll get no sensible response to "tank man" or "Tibetan protest" or "Hong Kong democracy demonstrations".
At the same time our social media giants have found that there is a big hungry world out there. Twitter has 284 million users, 78 per cent of them outside the US, even without a presence in China. In the last reported quarter its revenue was US$242million - not bad for a recently launched company. Facebook made $800 million, Google $13.2 billion. And they are all complaining that business is slow.
These companies see the Asia-Pacific region as the future, with offices strategically spread from Seoul to Beijing or Hong Kong, to Singapore and Sydney. And even the world's biggest Golden Shield won't keep out these treasure hunters for long.
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