[China has embarked on an internet campaign that signals a profound shift in the way it thinks of online censorship. For years, the China government appeared content to use methods that kept the majority of people from reading or using material it did not like, such as foreign news outlets, Facebook and Google. For the tech savvy or truly determined, experts say, China often tolerated a bit of wiggle room, leading to online users’ playing a cat-and-mouse game with censors for more than a decade.]
By Paul Mozur
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An
internet cafe in Beijing in May. China tested a new way on Tuesday to quickly
take
down online sites that offer tools for circumventing its internet
controls.
Credit Roman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency
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SHANGHAI
— The shutdown was unusual,
and came without warning.
Chinese censors tested on Thursday a new way
of shutting down websites and cutting off the country’s internet users from the
rest of the world. The censorship drill targeted tools that many in China use
to thwart the country’s vast online censorship system, though internet
companies said it also hit some sites at random.
One Beijing online video company watched as
its app and website went offline for about 20 minutes without warning. The way
it was disconnected — the digital tether that connected its service to the rest
of the internet was severed — suggested more than a mere technical outage,
according to the leader of the firm’s technology team, who requested anonymity
for himself and the company for fear of reprisals.
Chinese officials did not comment on the
test, and there was no indication that they would use the system again. But if
they do, it may not be a total surprise.
China has embarked on an internet campaign
that signals a profound shift in the way it thinks of online censorship. For
years, the China government appeared content to use methods that kept the
majority of people from reading or using material it did not like, such as
foreign news outlets, Facebook and Google. For the tech savvy or truly
determined, experts say, China often tolerated a bit of wiggle room, leading to
online users’ playing a cat-and-mouse game with censors for more than a decade.
Now the authorities are targeting the very
tools many people use to vault the Great Firewall. In recent days, Apple has
pulled apps that offer access to such tools — called virtual private networks,
or VPNs — off its China app store, while Amazon’s Chinese partner warned customers
on its cloud computing service against hosting those tools on their sites. Over
the past two months a number of the most popular Chinese VPNs have been shut
down, while two popular sites hosting foreign television shows and movies were
wiped clean.
The shift — which could affect a swath of
users from researchers to businesses — suggests that China is increasingly
worried about the power of the internet, experts said.
“It does appear the crackdown is becoming
more intense, but the internet is also more powerful than it has ever been,”
said Emily Parker, author of “Now I Know Who My Comrades Are,” a book about the
power of the internet in China, Cuba, and Russia. “Beijing’s crackdown on the
internet is commensurate with the power of the internet in China.”
China still has not clamped down to its full
ability, the experts said, and in many cases the cat-and-mouse game continues.
One day after Apple’s move last week, people on Chinese social media began
circulating a way to gain access to those tools that was so easy that even a
non-techie could use it. (It involved registering a person’s app store to
another country where VPN apps were still available.)
Still, Thursday’s test demonstrates that
China wants the ability to change the game in favor of the cat.
A number of Chinese internet service
providers said on their social media accounts, websites, or in emails on
Thursday that Chinese security officials would test a new way to find the
internet addresses of services hosting or using illegal content. Once found,
these companies said, the authorities would ask internet service providers to
tell their clients to stop. If the clients persisted, they said, the service
providers and Chinese officials would cut their connection in a matter of
minutes.
The Ministry of Public Security did not
respond to a faxed request for comment.
Studies suggest that anywhere from tens of
millions to well over a hundred million Chinese people use VPNs and other types
of software to get around the Great Firewall. While the blocks on foreign
television shows and pornography ward off many people, they often pose only
minor challenges to China’s huge population of web-savvy internet users.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has presided
over years of new internet controls, but he has also singled out technology and
the internet as critical to China’s future economic development. As cyberspace
has become more central to everything that happens in China, government
controls have evolved.
It is difficult to figure out the extent of
the new efforts, since many users and businesses will not discuss them publicly
for fear of getting on the bad side with the Chinese government. But some
frequent users said that getting around the restrictions had become
increasingly difficult.
One student, who has been studying in the
United States and was back in China for summer vacation, said that her local
VPN was blocked. She said she had taken the period as a sort of meditation away
from social media and left a note on Facebook to warn her friends why she was a
“gone girl.”
A doctoral student in environmental
engineering in at a university in China said it had become harder to do
research without Google, though his university had found alternative
publications so that students did not always need the internet. He has since
found a new way to get around the Great Firewall, the student said, without
disclosing what it was.
Close observers of the Chinese internet said
some VPNs still work — and that China could still do a lot more to intensify
its crackdown.
“We do think that if the government has
decided to do so, it could have shut down much more VPN usage right now,” said
a spokesman for VPNDada, a website created in 2015 to help Chinese users find
VPNs that work.
“If the government had sent more cats, the
mice would have a tougher time,” said the spokesman, who declined to be named
because of sensitivities around the group’s work in China. “I guess they didn’t
do so because they need to give some air for people or businesses to breathe.”
China’s online crackdowns are often cyclical.
The current climate is in part the result of the lead-up to a key Chinese
Communist Party meeting, the 19th Party Congress this autumn. Five years ago,
ahead of a similar meeting, VPNs were hit by then-unprecedented disruptions.
Much like economic policy or foreign affairs,
censorship in China is part of a complicated and often imperfect political
process. Government ministries feel pressure ahead of the party congress to
show they are effective or can step in if a problem appears, analysts said.
“So it’s definitely not an apocalypse for
VPNs,” said Paul Triolo, head of global technology at Eurasia Group, a
consultancy.
“Just a more complex environment for users to
navigate, and new capabilities and approaches give China better ability to shut
off some delta of VPN use at a time and place of Beijing’s choosing,” he said.
China’s population is learning to deal with
those difficulties at a younger age. Earlier this summer, China’s internet
giant Tencent began limiting the time that people under 18 were allowed to play
the popular online game Honor of Kings to an hour a day for those under 12, and
two hours for those age 12 to 18.
So Chinese youths have taken to an age-old
solution: getting a fake ID.
“Your Honor of Kings being limited?
Interested in getting an over-18 identification?” read a recent advertisement
on Chinese social media. “No problem. Get in touch for a low-price ID.”
Carolyn Zhang contributed research from
Shanghai. Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing.