For an authoritarian government looking to tighten control of an unruly internet, who better to call than the architect of China’s “great firewall”?
That was the thinking of Konstantin Malofeev, a multimillionaire with close links to the Kremlin and Russian Orthodox Church, who has become a key player in Moscow’s drive to tame the web and limit America’s digital influence.
On Wednesday, Mr Malofeev’s censorship lobbying group, Safe Internet League, will welcome a large delegation in Moscow led by Lu Wei, China’s online tsar, and Fang Binxing, the master builder of the country’s digital firewall. The Russians are hoping to learn Chinese techniques for filtering sites they deem undesirable so their contents can be kept from public view.