* How high will it go?
BEFORE he was jailed, few people had heard of Wu Xiangyang. But
when news of his conviction appeared in a state newspaper in late
December, internet users across China took note. A small trader
from the southern province of Guangxi, Mr Wu’s crime was to sell
cheap and commonly used software that enables people to circumvent
China’s draconian internet controls. His five-and-a-half-year
prison sentence is the toughest-known penalty imposed for such
“illegal business”.
Motivated Chinese have long found it fairly easy to acquire such
software, which provides access to what is known as a virtual
private network (VPN). Through this kind of connection, a user in
China can reach the thousands of websites that are blacklisted by
the government—including almost all Google services, many news
sites and most foreign social networks. Many people use VPNs
several times each day to jump the country’s “great firewall”, as
its system of online censorship is often called in English (Chinese
netizens have adopted the acronym GFW). Foreigners in China depend
on VPNs to reach sites they routinely need: everything from Gmail
and Dropbox to Facebook and Instagram.
Many observers believe that the great firewall’s porousness is a
feature, not a bug—that its architects see benefit in a barrier
that does not completely alienate entrepreneurs, academics and
foreign residents, but which most Chinese web-users will not have
the energy, or the finances (VPNs usually require subscriptions),
to surmount. But doubts are growing about this interpretation. For
the past year the government has been trying to make it harder to
find, and use, VPNs—the most common form of firewall-leaping tool.
Mr Wu’s punishment was clearly intended as a harsh warning to
others in China not to try selling such services to ordinary
consumers. Speculation is growing that even tougher curbs will be
imposed in 2018.
Such fears may prove unwarranted, but the government has been
doing little to allay them. Limiting the sale and use of VPNs is
one aim of a “clean-up” of the internet industry that began last
year and is supposed to be complete by the end of March. Several
popular providers based in China have folded under government
pressure. Those that remain are aimed at business users. Mr Wu’s
sentencing followed that of another man accused of a similar
offence who was jailed in March for nine months.
Piling on the bricks
As well as closing down suppliers based in China, the government
has made it more difficult for people in China to buy foreign VPN
services. In July Apple dismayed civil-rights campaigners when it
agreed to wipe VPN products from its Chinese app store. The company
pulled down more than 600 of them. They are also disappearing from
Android stores, though more slowly. Meanwhile most of the public
places that used to offer unfiltered internet—such as hotels with
many foreign guests—now provide the expurgated kind.
Subscribers to the best-known foreign VPN services are still
able to use their accounts in China. But they were rattled in July
when Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, reported that telecoms
companies had been told to block access to unauthorised “personal”
VPNs, presumably including foreign ones, by February 1st 2018.
China’s internet providers may well have the ability to do so:
during sensitive political events foreign VPNs often become
cumbersome or even impossible to use, apparently because of
government-ordered efforts to throttle them. The ministry in charge
of cyber affairs issued a confusing rebuttal of Bloomberg’s story.
Foreign diplomats in Beijing say they are finding it difficult to
get straight answers from the government about how far it intends
to go.
This is worrying not just for people who want to surf the web
without annoying obstructions. Many firms use their own in-house
VPN systems or similar technologies to enable staff to gain secure
access to corporate networks remotely. Officials say that tighter
controls over VPNs will not impede such usage. But businesses worry
that they may be forced instead to use government-authorised
methods, including officially approved VPNs and leased lines, that
are less reliable and easier to spy on than their own systems.
Those fears will only grow if a new law on encryption, presently
being drafted, limits the extent to which companies are permitted
to scramble sensitive communications—as some observers fear it
might. Businesses have good reason to feel nervous. A
cyber-security law that took effect in June allows authorities to
review data, such as customer records, that firms wish to send to
headquarters abroad.
As China’s increasingly autocratic leader, Xi Jinping, tightens
his grip on power, it is becoming harder to remain optimistic that
he will continue to tolerate circumvention of the firewall. He
shows little sympathy with the complaints of foreign businesses
about the difficulties they face in China. And he is clearly
determined that the internet in China be made dissent-free, even if
his sweeping efforts to achieve this irk members of the middle
class on which the Communist Party depends for support. Last year
regulators shut down many celebrity-gossip blogs and some sites
that stream live events such as concerts, apparently because they
could be used as platforms for embarrassing the party.
In part as a result of tightening censorship, China’s online
chatter has been gradually migrating from public microblogs to
instant-messaging apps such as WeChat, where users can create
private groups up to 500 strong. But even in these forums,
throwaway criticisms and jokes about the party get people in
trouble. The government is trying to make ordinary web users act as
censors themselves. In September it said it would start holding the
creators of all private chat groups jointly responsible if they
fail to police discussions to the authorities’ satisfaction.
The party is still haunted by the social-media-fuelled protests
of the Arab spring early this decade (recent anti-government
protests in Iran have been an unsettling reminder of that period:
censors have ordered media not to report on them). But officials
may have failed to appreciate the cost to China’s image abroad, and
to the party’s at home, should it deny access to services that make
online life liveable behind the great firewall. Most Chinese
citizens who regularly visit forbidden websites are people who have
benefited from China’s growing prosperity and who have little if
any desire to challenge the party’s rule. Angering them may prove
risky.
This article appeared in the China section of the print
edition under the headline “Virtual panic”
* How high will it go?
BEFORE he was jailed, few people had heard of Wu Xiangyang. But
when news of his conviction appeared in a state newspaper in late
December, internet users across China took note. A small trader
from the southern province of Guangxi, Mr Wu’s crime was to sell
cheap and commonly used software that enables people to circumvent
China’s draconian internet controls. His five-and-a-half-year
prison sentence is the toughest-known penalty imposed for such
“illegal business”.
Motivated Chinese have long found it fairly easy to acquire such
software, which provides access to what is known as a virtual
private network (VPN). Through this kind of connection, a user in
China can reach the thousands of websites that are blacklisted by
the government—including almost all Google services, many news
sites and most foreign social networks. Many people use VPNs
several times each day to jump the country’s “great firewall”, as
its system of online censorship is often called in English (Chinese
netizens have adopted the acronym GFW). Foreigners in China depend
on VPNs to reach sites they routinely need: everything from Gmail
and Dropbox to Facebook and Instagram.
Many observers believe that the great firewall’s porousness is a
feature, not a bug—that its architects see benefit in a barrier
that does not completely alienate entrepreneurs, academics and
foreign residents, but which most Chinese web-users will not have
the energy, or the finances (VPNs usually require subscriptions),
to surmount. But doubts are growing about this interpretation. For
the past year the government has been trying to make it harder to
find, and use, VPNs—the most common form of firewall-leaping tool.
Mr Wu’s punishment was clearly intended as a harsh warning to
others in China not to try selling such services to ordinary
consumers. Speculation is growing that even tougher curbs will be
imposed in 2018.
Such fears may prove unwarranted, but the government has been
doing little to allay them. Limiting the sale and use of VPNs is
one aim of a “clean-up” of the internet industry that began last
year and is supposed to be complete by the end of March. Several
popular providers based in China have folded under government
pressure. Those that remain are aimed at business users. Mr Wu’s
sentencing followed that of another man accused of a similar
offence who was jailed in March for nine months.
Piling on the bricks
As well as closing down suppliers based in China, the government
has made it more difficult for people in China to buy foreign VPN
services. In July Apple dismayed civil-rights campaigners when it
agreed to wipe VPN products from its Chinese app store. The company
pulled down more than 600 of them. They are also disappearing from
Android stores, though more slowly. Meanwhile most of the public
places that used to offer unfiltered internet—such as hotels with
many foreign guests—now provide the expurgated kind.
Subscribers to the best-known foreign VPN services are still
able to use their accounts in China. But they were rattled in July
when Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, reported that telecoms
companies had been told to block access to unauthorised “personal”
VPNs, presumably including foreign ones, by February 1st 2018.
China’s internet providers may well have the ability to do so:
during sensitive political events foreign VPNs often become
cumbersome or even impossible to use, apparently because of
government-ordered efforts to throttle them. The ministry in charge
of cyber affairs issued a confusing rebuttal of Bloomberg’s story.
Foreign diplomats in Beijing say they are finding it difficult to
get straight answers from the government about how far it intends
to go.
This is worrying not just for people who want to surf the web
without annoying obstructions. Many firms use their own in-house
VPN systems or similar technologies to enable staff to gain secure
access to corporate networks remotely. Officials say that tighter
controls over VPNs will not impede such usage. But businesses worry
that they may be forced instead to use government-authorised
methods, including officially approved VPNs and leased lines, that
are less reliable and easier to spy on than their own systems.
Those fears will only grow if a new law on encryption, presently
being drafted, limits the extent to which companies are permitted
to scramble sensitive communications—as some observers fear it
might. Businesses have good reason to feel nervous. A
cyber-security law that took effect in June allows authorities to
review data, such as customer records, that firms wish to send to
headquarters abroad.
As China’s increasingly autocratic leader, Xi Jinping, tightens
his grip on power, it is becoming harder to remain optimistic that
he will continue to tolerate circumvention of the firewall. He
shows little sympathy with the complaints of foreign businesses
about the difficulties they face in China. And he is clearly
determined that the internet in China be made dissent-free, even if
his sweeping efforts to achieve this irk members of the middle
class on which the Communist Party depends for support. Last year
regulators shut down many celebrity-gossip blogs and some sites
that stream live events such as concerts, apparently because they
could be used as platforms for embarrassing the party.
In part as a result of tightening censorship, China’s online
chatter has been gradually migrating from public microblogs to
instant-messaging apps such as WeChat, where users can create
private groups up to 500 strong. But even in these forums,
throwaway criticisms and jokes about the party get people in
trouble. The government is trying to make ordinary web users act as
censors themselves. In September it said it would start holding the
creators of all private chat groups jointly responsible if they
fail to police discussions to the authorities’ satisfaction.
The party is still haunted by the social-media-fuelled protests
of the Arab spring early this decade (recent anti-government
protests in Iran have been an unsettling reminder of that period:
censors have ordered media not to report on them). But officials
may have failed to appreciate the cost to China’s image abroad, and
to the party’s at home, should it deny access to services that make
online life liveable behind the great firewall. Most Chinese
citizens who regularly visit forbidden websites are people who have
benefited from China’s growing prosperity and who have little if
any desire to challenge the party’s rule. Angering them may prove
risky.
This article appeared in the China section of the print
edition under the headline “Virtual panic”