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Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

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Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#21

Post by makeitdouble »

eru wrote: post #8
Barrin92 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has literally already built the second largest tech sector on the planet on restrictions like this

China has a thriving hardware industry. Partially built on not enforcing restrictions. The rest of their tech sector is so-so. They do have a big internal market and a population eager for technology. It would be interesting to tease apart how much the restrictions hinder in some places, and perhaps help in a few others.

I kinda wonder how do you evaluate a thriving software economy in China's case.

A bit like Japan, I feel they're not going straight at the OS vendors (Microsoft/Apple) as these will bend over backward to accomadate them anyway, and in every area they've been actively blocked they made their own rival version (e.g. cloud services)

Is there anything we can point at to say "Chinese don't have the skills to do it" ?

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#22

Post by flohofwoe »

csomar wrote: post #15
notimetorelax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but I feel that you didn’t finish your thought. Why is that important to consider it in this context?

So it doesn't give you the idea that China is clamping down on software developers. Unless there is an on-going trend, this is an independent move by some administration out there.

Well of course the emperor can never be at fault, it's always the evil generals and advisors ;)

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#23

Post by pca006132 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #16

I 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…

> I don't know but this particular case sounds like a very modest fine (200 yuan) for using a VPN and sizeable fine for not reporting (and being taxed on) a foreign income.

I read this kind of comments in mainland's internet forums as well. People opposing this theory said that it should be the national tax authority handling this, not a local police department. Considering the local government did something crazy previously as well (collect fees from local corporations by threatening them), this seems like a problem with the local government instead of a nation-wide thing.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#24

Post by aragonite »

Retric wrote: post #19
Barrin92 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has literally already built the second largest tech sector on the planet on restrictions like this

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)

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#25

Post by ithkuil »

hker wrote: post #13

Some context which may be relevant: many local governments in China are in heavy debt, and they need more income: police have been collecting more and more fines, causing some outrages [1]. There are reports that many civil servants are unpaid for months (in Tianjin [2] and other cities [3][4]), in addition to getting heavy wage cuts [3][5]. A penalty of over 1 million yuan (>145K USD) for using VPN is a new developm…

Indeed the fine was only 200 yuan in this case

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#26

Post by cycrutchfield »

flohofwoe wrote: post #22
csomar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it doesn't give you the idea that China is clamping down on software developers. Unless there is an on-going trend, this is an independent move by some administration out there.

Well of course the emperor can never be at fault, it's always the evil generals and advisors ;)

Good tsar, bad boyars

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#27

Post by hkmaxpro »

csomar wrote: post #15
notimetorelax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but I feel that you didn’t finish your thought. Why is that important to consider it in this context?

So it doesn't give you the idea that China is clamping down on software developers. Unless there is an on-going trend, this is an independent move by some administration out there.

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of CCP’s mouthpiece Global Times, wrote a Weibo post questioning the confiscation. His Weibo post was later deleted. [0]

Whether the post was deleted by himself or by a censor, the central government is complicit in banning VPN and this is more than an independent move by a local government (unless you think the local government has substantial influence on Hu Xijin or the censor).

In fact another Guangdong man was also fined in 2018 for using VPN [1]. All these are in addition to prosecution of sales of VPN [2][3]. What makes you think this is an independent move by a local government?

[0] https://tw.news.yahoo.com/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E7%A8%8B%E5%BC%...

[1] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003431

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-man-arrested-after-mak...

[3] https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-entrepreneur-sentenced-to-over...

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#28

Post by aragonite »

throwaway4good wrote: post #16

I 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…

My understanding is that there's is an entirely legal official channel. All the tech companies use that to access GitHub, for example. Likewise for some universities and hotels.

It's an important detail that this guy is using VPN to work from home, not at work for a company.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#29

Post by number_man »

throwaway4good wrote: post #16

I 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…

> When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet.

This is because when you are roaming, the data traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel to your carrier. There's not much China can do without completely blocking roaming traffic. It's not a big deal though because vast majority of Chinese people don't have access to a foreign mobile line. As long as China can control what 99% of the population can access, it's already a win.

Re: Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

#30

Post by whatshisface »

makeitdouble wrote: post #21
eru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a thriving hardware industry. Partially built on not enforcing restrictions. The rest of their tech sector is so-so. They do have a big internal market and a population eager for technology. It would be interesting to tease apart how much the restrictions hinder in some places, and perhaps help in a few others.

I kinda wonder how do you evaluate a thriving software economy in China's case. A bit like Japan, I feel they're not going straight at the OS vendors (Microsoft/Apple) as these will bend over backward to accomadate them anyway, and in every area they've been actively blocked they made their own rival version (e.g. cloud services) Is there anything we can point at to say "Chinese don't have the skills to do it" ?

How anyone can look at over a billion unique people and say "Chinese this" or "Chinese that" is as far beyond me as anything.
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