As the much-anticipated Communist Party Congress nears, China is seemingly tightening its already stringent internet controls. In an increasingly digital age, these escalated efforts to regulate are part of an alarming bid to wield absolute control over the population’s online activities.
Claims of increased internet surveillance were corroborated by a document circulated on various online platforms. According to this document, the Chinese government orchestrated a particularly intrusive drill seeking to “step up online security for the 19th Party Congress and tackle the problem of smaller websites illegally disseminating harmful information.”
China is home to a rapidly growing online population, and it’s normal for users to look for ways to overcome the country’s infamous “Great Firewall”. The use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is one such method. By installing a VPN, internet users can conceal their IP addresses and access websites that are otherwise blocked by the government.
Such websites famously include social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the popular search engine Google, eminently reputable news organizations like the BBC, among other internationally frequented online destinations.
State-endorsed media report that the exercise conducted last Thursday was targeted not just at the websites, but aimed to coerce internet data centers to surrender details of website owners, further enhancing their control over the online landscape.
Adding a new chapter to the nation’s stringent cyberspace regulations, Beijing’s cyber regulators recently passed laws specifically targetting VPNs. VPNs, which permit users to avoid internet censorship and access blocked sites like Facebook and Twitter, will now face additional scrutiny under these new laws.
Echoing the severity of the crackdown, government-affiliated media also confirmed that the exercise saw officers from the internet surveillance wing of the public security liaise with internet data centers. Their mission – to locate and target websites hosting content that the authorities deem to be “harmful”.
John Sudworth, a correspondent from the BBC based in Beijing, noted that several sites were swiftly shut down during the two-and-a-half-hour period when the drill took place.
In closing, a notable quote from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has voiced his hope that the current restrictions “will decrease with time” as “users deserve some amount of privacy too”. Amid the rising tide of government censorship, only time will tell whether his plea for digital freedom will resonate within China’s halls of power.