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Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
31–40 of 157 posts
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
They built it by kicking everything else out of their internal market. It’s however questionable how competitive they are on the global stage. Take Baidu Maps it launched in 2005, by 2016 it had 348 million users per month, but was still limited to China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now days it covers the world but a foreign user finds the UI is still largely in Chinese rather than being localized. That’s just one e…
Google was hardly kicked out in 2010. And in 2018 they were going to re-enter under essentially the same political conditions (Dragonfly), but it was pressure from American politicians/the public that deterred them from doing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
Protectionism need not be binary. As one example, Chinese users of Google and many foreign companies websites hosted inside China experienced random slowdowns making them significantly less appealing to users. This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#33I don't actually understand the Chinese rules on uncensored internet access. When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet. Surely this is according to Chinese rules. Likewise all the expats and Chinese I have met all used whatever they wanted of US social media plus they had a shit ton of pirated(?) American TV shows and movies. Perh…
The rules are foreigners are allowed to use VPNs, and foreign mobile phones aren’t censored at all. Chinese nationals are forbidden from using VPNs, but similarly to how piracy is illegal and can lead to large fines in the US,
Some people use VPNs without being caught.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#341M Yuan is roughly 137,000 USD.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#35There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.
If you take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world. And still moving faster, it feels.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#36I don't actually understand the Chinese rules on uncensored internet access. When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet. Surely this is according to Chinese rules. Likewise all the expats and Chinese I have met all used whatever they wanted of US social media plus they had a shit ton of pirated(?) American TV shows and movies. Perh…
China censors the Internet because it doesn’t want its citizens to receive information from outside or unite together without its control. Censoring foreigners is not useful for either purpose so they don’t bother.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#37I don't actually understand the Chinese rules on uncensored internet access. When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet. Surely this is according to Chinese rules. Likewise all the expats and Chinese I have met all used whatever they wanted of US social media plus they had a shit ton of pirated(?) American TV shows and movies. Perh…
The way international roaming works, is similar to a VPN back to your home cellular network on the back end, this all happens transparently to the user. You can verify this whilst traveling if you browse to any site using IP geolocation, it will think you are in your home country.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#38There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.
China has literally already built the second largest tech sector on the planet on restrictions like this
Yes, but the restrictions have mostly been a thin veil for programmers. If this trend continues, we will see the real effects of GFW on China software development.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google was hardly kicked out in 2010. And in 2018 they were going to re-enter under essentially the same political conditions (Dragonfly), but it was pressure from American politicians/the public that deterred them from doing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
Protectionism need not be binary. As one example, Chinese users of Google and many foreign companies websites hosted inside China experienced random slowdowns making them significantly less appealing to users. This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China.
I remember when those complaints surfaced. However, re:
> This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China
... I'm reasonably sure that happened after Google's exit from China, and the slowness complaints were about accessing Google services outside the GFW either in HK or abroad. (Not all Google services overseas were blocked: for example, Google+ was accessible albeit unreliable and slow.) I don't recall any slowness complaints about Google.cn (which was hosted inside China) when it was still a thing.
Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN
#40Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense.
Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenient.
EDIT: But I guess this guy didn’t have the option to report the income and pay his taxes? In that case it’s definitely another dimension of repression…