China Tightens Great Firewall, Blocks VPNs and Foreign Sites

"China Digital Times" share a series of internal notices which raised concerns regarding the many tools Chinese citizens use to access the uncensored internet might soon be forcibly blocked, reported Bitter Winter.

VPNs (services) and "airports" (devices for routers) are being used by the citizens to access the uncensored intranet till now, an upstream telecom partner issued instructions to a regional content-delivery provider requiring them to terminate all international connections for the business clients and "every IP address under their control must block traffic to any location outside mainland China. The same notice directs customers to remove any signs of VPNs, proxies, or other tools used to bypass restrictions," wrote Tan Liwei in the report.

Immediate disconnections, data loss, and no refunds will be faced by those who do not comply with these instructions.

Allegedly, major state telecom companies were invited to a meeting focused on tightening control over unauthorised cross-border data connections, from Ministry of Industry and Information Technology according to another document.

There was special emphasis on "dedicated lines", which allow the flow of information beyond the Great Firewall, without any official approval.

Legal experts described China's rules on VPNs exist in a grey area, and ordinary users have faced little more than occasional fines.

"It is unclear if the new draft on Cybercrime law makes the shift towards full criminalisation, but the recent governmental and corporate notices suggest that stricter enforcement is coming even without new laws," the report added.

"If fully enforced, the new wave of restrictions would further expand the Great Firewall, which makes the Chinese Internet an enclosed garden. As always, the initial victims of such measures are not criminals or extremists, but ordinary people who want more than government-approved information allows," Liwei said.

- IANS