China??s Great Firewall Gets Taller
Source: Eva Dou
People use computers in an Internet cafe in Beijing. China's Communist Party is tightening its grip on the Internet. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency
China’s government has unveiled a smarter and stricter Internet filter, riling web users and widening the divide between China’s Internet and the World Wide Web.
A recent upgrade to China’s web filters, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall, has made it more difficult to use services called virtual private networks to circumvent the country’s blocks to U.S. services like Google and Facebook .
Chinese officials confirmed a crackdown on VPNs this week, saying that new measures were needed as the Internet evolved. In the past week, major VPN providers such as Astrill have reported disruptions to their services.
The move is further indication of China’s desire to create a parallel Internet environment that it can more easily control. The web filters serve a dual purpose of screening out content critical of the Chinese government and providing protection for China’s own growing web firms against stronger overseas rivals.
The upgraded firewall also comes as Beijing is calling for U.S. technology companies to submit to intrusive security inspections, according to U.S. business groups.
This time, China appears to have made the blocking of VPN connections more automated and dynamic, said Liviu, who runs a VPN service based in Romania and requested his surname to be withheld to avoid reprisal. Whereas China’s firewall previously blocked connections known to be VPNs, since late last year it also appears to automatically find and block connections that it thinks are likely to be VPNs, he said.
“Now it seems they are doing it automatically,” he said. “You can apply some clever rules for the firewalls that will not trigger blocks.”
The crackdown has complicated life for business people in China who rely on global services such as Gmail and Twitter to communicate with clients and collaborators.
Christopher Dobbing, director of Vogmask China, which sells pollution masks, said the disruptions to VPNs have made it difficult to connect to Gmail, Facebook and other services that he uses to correspond with clients.
“I couldn’t run my business without it (VPN),” he said. “I understand the government needs to protect itself against risks, but I’m just trying to do my work.”
Liheng Bai, an independent college counselor based in Shanghai, said the VPN crackdown has also presented challenges to educators and students. Ms. Bai says she searches for information about U.S. colleges online and helps students log into admissions portals when they apply for U.S. colleges―a slow process without a VPN.
“In the long run, it really affects Chinese students’ access to the latest information in education, science and literature. It’s very narrowing and limits their world view,” she said, adding that search results from Google and Chinese search engine Baidu are very different.
Kestrel Lee, a Shanghai-based marketing consultant who is active on social media, says that he used to use Gmail as his primary email, but has switched to Hotmail due to blocks and disruptions.
“All of us who use Gmail have created new accounts by now,” he said. “It’s no use trying to fight this.”
The VPN disruptions, added to already slower connection speeds for loading foreign websites in China, mean decreased productivity for Chinese researchers, engineers and others whose work involves keeping tabs on global developments.
But state media has been arguing that the benefits for China’s tech sector are larger. A Global Times column on Wednesday said the success of China’s Internet giants could be credited to the firewall.
“The firewall blocks certain overseas websites in a targeted fashion, rather than isolating China’s Internet from the overseas one,” the column said.
Others disagree. Peking University professor Wu Bihu took to the microblog platform Weibo to complain about recent crackdowns on the Internet and other media.
“What do you want to do?” he wrote. “The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology closes and cuts off the global Internet, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television rudely censors TV dramas, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce wanted to screw Alibaba without checking the source of the fakes or good intention…China has reformed and opened up for decades but now it’s back to the impasse of seclusion. Isn’t it sad!”
While the blocks are unlikely to be reversed by China’s government, it could spur VPN providers to come up with new and better ways to get around the firewall, analysts say. VPN providers pointed to a similar crackdown in 2012 that resulted in stealthier wall-hopping techniques.
Corrections & Amplifications
Liviu, who runs a VPN service based in Romania and requested his surname to be withheld to avoid reprisal, said “Now it seems they are doing it automatically,” and added that “you can apply some clever rules for the firewalls that will not trigger blocks.” An earlier version of this article omitted the word “not” in the second part of the quote.
―Alyssa Abkowitz in Beijing and Fanfan Wang and Colum Murphy in Shanghai contributed to this article.
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