China bans the use of unauthorized VPN services
China has launched a campaign to ban VPN services that have not been authorized by authorities. The campaign is part of a series of repressive measures in the run-up to the 19th Communist Party Congress in the fall of 2017.
Enforcement by the Chinese authorities will begin immediately, according to the South China Morning Post. All VPN services in mainland China require prior government approval from now on. According to Reuters, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s “clean-up” campaign is targeting Internet service providers, data centers and CDNs.
According to the Chinese ministry, China’s “Internet connectivity market is showing signs of disrupted development that requires urgent regulation and enforcement.” With these measures, the government wants to prevent Chinese internet censorship, also known as The Great Firewall of China, from being circumvented. This censorship of the Chinese Communist Party is intended to keep control of all politically sensitive information.
VPN services have long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government because it allows users to visit foreign websites that are normally blocked in China. In March 2016, during the two major meetings of the Communist Party’s National People’s Congress, paid VPN connections were blocked for a week. In early 2015, it became clear that China had blocked three VPN networks from the providers Astrill, StrongVPN and Golden Frog.
Last November, the Communist Party passed a controversial law, which will come into effect in June 2017. The law further restricts freedom of expression on the internet and confronts service providers with new rules. Part of this law is the obligation for internet service providers to cooperate with authorities’ investigations into crime and national security. The new law also introduces a mandatory testing and certification system for computer equipment.
The Chinese authorities present the law as a ‘cyber security law’, but according to many western foreign companies it limits innovation. They fear that local Chinese competitors in the IT sector that operate with the certified systems will gain an advantage. China blocks access to many major Western websites, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. According to Greatfire.org, China blocks 172 of the 1,000 most popular websites, based on a ranking from Alexa.
The Communist Party Congress is generally held in October or November. The last party congress was in 2012.