The Great Firewall of China might be loathed by pretty much everyone, but one can't deny that it can be pretty effective. This infographic, from Background Check, explains how the firewall actually functions.

It's worth noting Tech in Asia's Charlie Custer's misgivings about the first section of the infographic:

I’m not a big fan of the first half of this infographic, which is a little misleading. For instance, the Great Firewall exists just as much to block illegal content like gun sales websites as it does to block politically sensitive content. Moreover, the infographic implies that the Great Firewall blocks things like microblog posts, which it actually doesn’t — the vast majority of the time, objectionable posts are deleted by the content teams at the company that runs the microblogging service.