China has reportedly told its three nationwide carriers that within seven months they will need to suspend customers’ access to major websites hosted outside the country. Google, Facebook and U.S. news sites are currently available to Chinese citizens who access them via virtual private networks, but the government is reportedly set to crack down on carriers who do not suspend access to VPNs by February 1, 2018.
China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom offer monthly data packages to their customers, and many customers use some of their monthly data to access VPNs. Loss of access to these sites could prompt some consumers to buy less data. At the same time, it opens up opportunities for Chinese carriers to monetize more of their own content, since they will face less competition if they prohibit VPN access.
Acccording to Bloomberg, international companies with Chinese operations are expected to still be able to access the broader internet by leasing landline connections and registering those connections with the government.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has championed the idea of “cyber sovereignty” for China, and the router blockades the government enforces are known as the Great Firewall. In the spring of 2016, the U.S. government labeled the Great Firewall as a trade barrier for the first time in three years. The U.S. Trade Representative said internet blocking in China was getting worse, with eight of the world’s 25 most highly trafficked sites banned in China.
A Berkeley professor who focuses on internet censorship in China told The Guardian that the crackdown may be tied to internal politics in China. The country is preparing for a political summit that only occurs twice every ten years, and President Xi Jinping may want to limit his citizens’ access to information about his political opponents.
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