China’s censorship of the Internet continues on seemingly unabated. While many websites will forever be blocked in the dictatorship, some residents and visitors to China use VPNs to get around the blocks.
Unfortunately, a popular
More Censorship of VPNs in China
The last round of serious concerns over online censorship in China flared up in July, and have gone on since then. Now, through a release sent out by Astrill, we can confirm that China is once again trying to push more
“Due to upcoming Beijing’s military parade next week, China is cracking down on IPSec VPNs using GFW auto-learning technique.”
They then go on to say that they are working on a new iOS app that should work it’s way around these new Internet censorship blocks. No timeframe for this development has been given, nor has any other comment on the subject been given at this time.
VPN censorship in China
VPNs are tool which allow users in all countries the chance to get around the censorship placed on them based on their location. It is no secret that the Chinese government doesn’t like that there are tools available which allow their citizens freer access to information. With VPNs being a major tool for this, you can be sure that they are working on shutting more of them down.
Here at BVP, we work hard on our lists of the best VPNs available. Our list of the best VPNs in China is current, and to the best of our knowledge it is still accurate. If you have information to the contrary please comment below and let us know!
Censorship in China as a whole
The censorship in China overall is not entirely about VPNs. In a recent blog post by Great Fire you can read about the censorship of:
- Shadowsocks: an open source tool for privacy was shutdown on Github by the police, only to become a trending tool
- GoAgent: a Google based tunneling tool was removed from Github
- QuJing: a popular circumvention tool was removed
For every tool that the Chinese government shuts down, another will open. There are still all of the VPNs on our list available to lift blocks on the Chinese people for starters. Even in the past VPNs have been blocked only to open again. This shows that while the Chinese government may crack down on Astrill, there are still ways for the Chinese people to reach the rest of the outside world and get around geoblocks.
Feature image via voyageurex / Shutterstock