When it comes to Internet censorship, China is probably the strictest of them all.
“All special cable and VPN services on the mainland need to obtain prior government approval,” said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. This means VPN service providers are now considered illegal, unless approved by the government. Unfortunately, this also means that China’s Internet users will be losing their access AGAIN to all the blocked websites.
The so-called Great Firewall is used to strengthen the cyberspace information security management, and regulate and govern the disordered Internet service market. According to the government, it would take effect immediately until the 31st of March 2018.
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Since China’s Internet users have been relying heavily on VPNs which enables them to access sites that are blocked from the country, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and many more, the crackdown will have a massive effect to their access. Even Apple are pulling off apps from their App Store in order to comply with the government’s rules.
The strict Internet censorship might be in preparation for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Just last Saturday, two websites run by a liberal and 15 other websites were shut down by the government.
Source: Arstechnica