by Thomas Rippel on February 11, 2010
What if Google leaves China (more on that
here) and decides to make a free VPN service available? What a coup that would be!
First, I myself only recently used a VPN for the first time and since I am not the most tech savvy person, I only understand the broad concept of it, which is this: A VPN is basically a virtual computer network using the internet to create a private connection between remote computers.
This method in one form or another is used for example by many companies to let employees remotely connect to the company’s secure network or for banks to establish safe channels for information flow. The usage of VPNs in one form or another is ubiquitous in a business environment, without which information flow would break down immediately. China is no exception to this. And in order to not interfere with all this, the Great Firewall of China just ignores VPN connections and lets any encrypted information pass through.
Now, there is of course nothing that stops a private user in China from using a VPN service to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, except of course for the $40 a year you have to pay for a regular VPN service and the fact that you need a credit card to pay for it… which is of course not “nothing” at all for the average Chinese. I would guess that less than 5% of China’s internet users have a credit card and are either willing or able to pay for such a service if they knew about it.
And this has worked out just fine for the censors in China. If you are so unhappy with the Great Firewall of China (and its not like people don’t know about it) that you are willing to use a credit card and pay for a VPN, then fine. Better than having a horde of upper middle class netizens getting up in arms.
But what if Google does leave China? Whats there to stop them from turning around and making available a free VPN for every Chinese netizen? That, the Chinese government would not like at all, however there is little they could do right away short of blocking all VPN connections and thereby instantly crippling the entire financial sector. Long term, however they could retry the failed and much hated Green Dam Youth Escort incident (more on that here).
Who really know what could happen. But for the heck of it, here are my top 3 scenarios:
1) The VPN service would only gradually catch on with a small fraction of internet users and the government would let it go just like they did so far.
2) Google suddenly widely publicizes their free VPN service, catching the censors off guard. The VPN gets downloaded millions of times before the censors can catch on and the file spreads like a virus. All efforts by the censors to contain the spread of the file prove futile.
3) Same as number 2, except in this scenario, some new form of the Green Dam Youth Escort program will be launched on a massive scale and something like a China-only Windows update will be released that removes Google’s VPN program from all computers.
Alas, this is just a thought experiment that will probably never see the light of day.
by Thomas Rippel on December 10, 2009
Since I have left Chengdu 2 years ago I have been hearing an increasing amount of stories of expats having visa trouble and getting jilted. The nice way – not getting a visa-renewal, or the not so nice way – police giving you 48 hours to leave the country.
The latest I am hearing, anyone in Chengdu who is not thereon a foreign expert visa and has been in the country for more than 5 years is getting the boot – i.e. all English teachers who are there on one or two year contracts, those laowai “models”,”DJs” and all other “creatives” and all those deadbeat China-bums (you know who I’m talking about) who having been lounging around on those agency arranged visas and student visas are in trouble.
The reason? In my time in Chengdu I have met quite a few deadbeats, teaching here and there or doing a number of “jobs” they would never get money for back home. Oftentimes they teach English and do a horrible job at it or they just lounge around and do much of nothing. Now China wants to get rid of them. I am convinced this is the case in Chengdu because I have heard about the kinds of people who are getting the boot and I have also just heard from two of my friends who have been in Chengdu for 3 and 4 years that a very good Australian teacher who has been working at their school for 5 years did not get the boot because the school fought for him and got him a foreign expert visa. So in the end this might just be a bureaucratic hoop that most school or companies are simply unwilling to jump if the person they have to do it for is not really worth the extra trouble.
At this point I want to stress that all the individuals I am referring to are or were in the Chengdu area. Even though sometimes it seems like, or at least one is lead to believe, that policies coming from the almighty CCP center in Beijing are followed to the dot throughout China, the reality is that China is a vast and disparate place and provincial, municipal and local governments have vastly different interests and implement or enforce policies to vastly different degrees. So you might find that other provinces and cities completely ignore this new rule or are more harsh in its implementation.
I have also been reading on James Fallow’s blog about all teachers aged 60+ getting the boot. Again, one hears different stories from different places in China. For more on that here.
