China’s Web controls jolt firms, scientists

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,” said Chen 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.

Astronomers and physicists use services such as Google Scholar and Dropbox, accessible only via VPN, to share research and stay in touch with foreign colleagues. Merchants use Facebook and other blocked social media to find customers. Students look for material in subjects from history to film editing on YouTube and other blocked sites.

Control over information is especially sensitive ahead of October’s twicea-decade ruling party congress at which President Xi Jinping is due to be named to a second fiveyear term as leader.

The VPN crackdown is part of a campaign to tighten political control that activists say is the most severe since the 1989 suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement. Dozens of activists and lawyers have been detained.

A cybersecurity law that took effect in June tightens control on online data. Regulators have stepped up censorship of social media and video websites.

How many people might be affected is unclear, but consumer research firm GlobalWebIndex said a survey of Chinese web surfers this year found 14 percent use a VPN daily.