Business and academics at risk of losing out as China tightens online censorship
Latest restrictions on VPNs threaten access to websites that traders and scientists rely on to reach foreign customers and colleagues
Frank Chen’s e-commerce business has nothing to do with politics but he worries it might be sunk by the Communist Party’s latest effort to control what the Chinese public sees online.
Chen’s 25-employee company sells clothes and appliances to Americans and Europeans through platforms including Facebook, one of thousands of websites blocked by China’s web filters.
Chen reaches it using a virtual private network, but that window might be closing after Beijing launched a campaign in January to stamp out use of VPNs to evade its “Great Firewall.”
“Our entire business might be paralysed,” Chen told AP by phone from the western city of Chengdu. Still, he added later in a text message: “National policy deserves a positive response and we fully support it.”
The crackdown threatens to disrupt work and study for millions of Chinese entrepreneurs, scientists and students who rely on websites they can see only with a VPN.
The technology, developed to create secure, encrypted links between computers, allows Chinese web users to see a blocked site by hiding the address from government filters.
