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Previously, there was an implicit understanding that the Great Firewall was in place to prevent unauthorised access to the Internet by the masses. This is to pr
by iliketosleep 9y ago
Previously, there was an implicit understanding that the Great Firewall was in place to prevent unauthorised access to the Internet by the masses. This is to prevent them from being influenced by foreign media, prevent too much information leakage of citizen info (e.g. via facebook), and to give Chinese tech companies a monopoly in China.
If, however, you had the will and ability to use VPN software, the government usually turned a blind eye. Afterall, it was only a minority of people and they usually had a genuine need. In fact, this is what made staying in China tolerable. If this block does truly come into effect, they are essentially closing the door to the outside world.
China was a country of reasonable compromises before, but with Xi Jinping's nationalism, they are starting to think "why should we compromise at all?"
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThat was never the official or even the implicit position. There has always been a war with VPNs, want VPNs work and don't can change monthly, and it's been like that for the last 10 years. Xi's nationalism is nothing new here, they just think that the tech is good enough to cut off VPNS for good now. China has been trying to close their internet since after the Olympics. It isn't surprising that they would eventually succeed at it.
- imron 9y agoSince well before the Olympics actually. I was in China when 9/11 happened and for a brief period of time they opened access to a large number of previously blocked foreign news sites so that people could read what was happening.
- l5870uoo9y 9y agoThe have periodically been discussions about "opening up" in China. Fore-instance the party where split in the decision to crack down on the Falun Gong movement who also included many party members. Likewise were there some opposition to the violent crack down on Tiananmen square. Hardliners seems to win.
- baybal2 9y agoIt is a trick, and old Chinese trick. You call out to your enemies to come for negotiations, and then kill them
- gcb0 9y agowhy would people be checking a news site that was previously blocked? do you go everyday "oh, let me try cnn.com... oh, still blocked. let's try tomorrow?"
- Belphemur 9y agoI guess it's for the tourist that where in China when it happened.
- gpvos 9y agoYou might follow a link from somewhere?
- imron 9y agoWell, first of all, it's not every day that a news event on the scale of 9/11 happens. As for how I discovered they were unblocked, I got a phone call from my Mum early in the morning after the attack (the attack happened during the Chinese night time) and went in to the office (which had the only available internet access), and one of my colleagues told me that the bbc and nytimes were no longer blocked. Not sure how he found out they were unblocked, but he'd been there most of the night. Then once you know one is unblocked you try them all :-)
- uloop 9y agoI don't think there has been many technical reasons why they couldn't block VPNs. I would presume that it has more to do with the overall cost / benefit of the open Internet. Access to the open Internet is becoming less and less of a necessity. "The next big thing" isn't really happening. A country like China, having developed their own industry, can safely rely on companies coming to them or developing their own alternatives. At the same time things like ddos, ransomware, money laundering, black markets, foreign influence, rumors, populism etc. is becoming more of a problem. It's like any other technology adopted by China. They will buy or co-develop something as long as you have something to bring to the table, when you don't they will do it themselves instead. I don't agree with the Chinese governments position nor methods, but I'm not sure their reasoning around "cyber-sovereignty" wrong.
- gcb0 9y agothen why would they say "personal vpn"?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dis-sys 9y agoNon-sense. Just check online articles and blogs to see when they started to block stuff like linux ipsec vpn. You may also check the reports on how/when they "talk" to the shadowsocks vpn author to force him to stop working on the project.
- b9599b93b5 9y ago> they "talk" to the shadowsocks vpn author to > force him to stop working on the project. just some side note... the author of shadowsocks vpn is "her", a girl goes by the id "clowwindy"...
- fishywang 9y agoclowwindy is male. the current maintainer of shadowsocks is a female.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gcb0 9y agoand that's why we always use they if we don't known the person(s) we're talking about.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoThis thread is about China and virtual private networks.