China Detains Former Deputy Internet Czar Amid Graft Probe

Yang Fan  |  Radio Free Asia The ruling Chinese Communist Party is investigating its former deputy propaganda czar on suspicion of “disciplinary violations,” a term generally used to mean corruption, official media reported. Lu Wei, once dubbed the “father” of the Great Firewall of government internet censorship, is being investigated by the party’s Central Commission […]

China ‘Worst Abuser of Internet Freedom’ Worldwide: Freedom House Report

Hai Nan and Zhu Dan  |  Radio Free Asia China was the year’s worst abuser of internet freedom for the third year running in 2017, according to an annual report from U.S.-based freedom-of-speech watchdog Freedom House. As the ruling Chinese Communist Party held its 19th Party Congress, enshrining the “new era” ideology of President Xi […]

Tea Drinking in China Is Code For an Informal Interrogation

VISION TIMES Peng Chengxian’s family woke up on a Sunday morning to the sound of knocking on their front door. Two policemen walked into Peng’s house; his wife became panicked. She immediately took his smartphone, turned on the recorder, and put it in his pocket. “Be careful,” she said. Peng was nervous. He did not know […]

Surveillance, Privacy and the Right to Know: A Delicate Imbalance in Hong Kong

Nancy Mak, Grace Liyang, Rammie Chui  |   Global Voice This article was originally published on Varsity, a magazine run by students from the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on March 31 2017. Joshua Wong Chi-fung made numerous headlines in 2014 as the youngest of the pro-democracy activists […]

China’s Annual Parliament Ends Amid ‘Tightest Internet Controls Yet’

Yang Fan and Ding Wenqi  |  Radio Free Asia China’s annual parliament, which closed on Wednesday, was marked by stricter-than-usual controls on what the country’s 720 million internet users can see or post online, activists have told RFA. Many of the more outspoken members of the popular chat network QQ had their accounts shut down […]

Chinese Scientists Speak Out Against the Great Firewall

Oiwan Lam  |  Global Voices Chinese scientists have periodically spoken out against the national web filtering system, often termed ‘the Great Firewall’, which blocks and censors web traffic from overseas websites. It damages research, they say. But their voices have been dismissed — and deleted — again and again. The latest criticism came from Luo […]

Analysts: China’s New Internet Controls May Hurt China

Joyce Huang  |  Voice of America China has intensified efforts to tighten its strong grip on the internet, officially outlawing unauthorized internet connections, including virtual private network (VPN) services, which enable many users there to bypass the country’s infamous “Great Firewall.” The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced in a notice Sunday that […]

China Ramps Up Control of Domain Names, Adds New Layer to Great Firewall

Goh Fung |  Radio Free Asia The ruling Chinese Communist Party looks set to add a new layer to state control over what the country’s 710 million internet users can see online, with a raft of new measures that could undermine their use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around censorship. The draft regulations, […]

China’s Cybersecurity Law Could be Used to Target Peaceful Activists

Jing Xuan, Lin Ping, and Xi Wang  |  Radio Free Asia China’s draconian new cybersecurity law, passed by the country’s rubber-stamp parliament this week, has sparked concerns that it will be used to further stifle individual freedoms after a crackdown on dissent. The National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the controversial legislation on Monday, with the […]