Chen’s 25-employee corporation sells clothes and instruments to Americans and Europeans by applications including Facebook, one of the thousands of websites obstructed by China’s web filters. Chen moves stock using a virtual private network, but that windowpane might be ending after Beijing launched a campaign in January to mark out the use of VPNs to avoid its “Great Firewall.”
“Our entire business might be paralyzed,” said Chen by telephone from the western city of Chengdu. Still, he continued later in a text message, “national policy deserves a positive response and we fully encourage it.”
The crackdown imperils to disrupt business and study for millions of Chinese entrepreneurs, scientists, and trainees who rely on websites they can see simply with a VPN. The technology, formed to create secure, encrypted links between networks, allows Chinese web users to see a barred site by hiding the IP from government filters.
Astronomers and physicists use services such as Google Scholar and Dropbox, available only via VPN, to share study and stay in touch with foreign colleagues. Merchants use Facebook and additional blocked social media to find clients. Students look for stuff in subjects from history to film editing on YouTube and other blocked sites.
Control over data is especially nervous ahead of October’s twice-a-decade ruling party congress at which President Xi Jinping is due to be elected to a second five-year term as leader.
The VPN crackdown is a piece of a crusade to tighten political power that activists say is the most critical since the 1989 suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy campaign.
Dozens of activists and lawyers have been arrested. A cyber security law that exercised effect in June tightens control on online data. Regulators have moved up censorship of social media and video websites.
How many bodies might be affected is unclear, but customer research firm GlobalWebIndex said a study of Chinese web surfers this year found 14 percent use a VPN daily. If that rate holds for China’s total online population of 731 million, it implies the nation might have as many as 100 million regular users.
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