BBC Chinese recently reported that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology just revealed a one year plan to crack down on “illegal” Internet provider services. The Ministry issued a nationwide memo to identify and remove unlicensed or multi-level leased VPN services, regardless of whether the method was self-established or via leased lines. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, which is a technology that establishes a virtual “direct connection” between two computers based on encryption. This structure is widely used in countries with Internet censorship to bypass government monitoring. Many Chinese netizens use VPN to visit websites that the Chinese Great Firewall bans, such as Facebook and Twitter. The Chinese government’s latest move was conducted in the name of cracking down on “inappropriate content.”
Source: BBC Chinese, January 23, 2017
http://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-38714639