As censorship in China increases, VPNs are becoming more important

Li jiaqi, a popular Chinese influencer, had a talent for selling cosmetics. But his last performance was an unintentional advertisement for virtual private networks (vpns), which help Chinese netizens get around online censorship. On June 3rd Mr Li live-streamed himself with an ice-cream cake that looked like a tank. This seemed to anger the authorities, who may have viewed it as a reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre, when soldiers and tanks fired on protesters in Beijing, killing hundreds, if not thousands, in 1989. Its anniversary was a day later, something Mr Li may not have known since the government blocks online discussion of the bloodshed. Nevertheless, his show was cut off.

vpns are becoming increasingly important in China, which has grown more inward-looking since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. The country’s digital barricade against content it deems undesirable, called the “great firewall”, has been reinforced under President Xi Jinping. He has deployed an army of censors and the latest technology to combat foreign influence. A new draft rule would see all comments on Chinese social media screened before they are posted. But vpn software helps internet users in China get around all this by making it look as though their computer or mobile phone is located in a different country. They are thus able to view websites that are blacklisted by the government, such as Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter.