On Monday, the Chongqing municipality in China posted a troubling regulation on its website which states that anyone who tries to bypass the Great Firewall of China using a VPN will be subject to legal punishment by law. The regulation states that if the user in China is caught for the first time, he/she will receive a warning and will be banned from accessing the network. If the user is caught the second time, trying to access illegal internet content in China for commercial purposes and profiting up to 10,000 yaun, in this case the user will be subject to a fine anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 yaun. In addition to the fine, all gained assets will be forfeited. The regulation was very vaguely based that the confusion came on whether it would be applied to individuals or businesses or both. The regulation was originally in effect since July of last year, yet it has only been publicly announced on Monday. The government in China didn’t directly use the term VPNs but instead referred to them as “the use of illegal channels“.
Even though China has one of the highest number of internet users in the world due to its large population and of course its international trade position, yet it has been ranked one of the highest countries in the world when it comes to online censorship. This was stated in the report by US think tank Freedom House. It even ranked worse than Iran and Syria. Among the banned online content in China are Facebook, Twitter, Google, and countless more websites. China usually justifies these actions by claiming that these regulations are placed for the purpose of “strengthening the cyber security of China overall”.
This is not the first time that the government in China causes confusion to internet users as a similar incident took place back in January when China announced that a crackdown on commercial VPN providers will start which was misunderstood for an attack on individual VPN users.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, there is still nothing to worry about for 2 reasons; first of all it is very difficult to track down VPN users, especially if a reliable VPN is used which depends on a high level of data encryption, and secondly there has never been any sensors placed that have fined anyone who tries to access Facebook from China. In other words, individual VPN users should not worry about the regulations as it focuses more on business uses of VPNs.
