China Denies It's Blocking VPNs But Confirms Crackdown is Coming

China's top technology industry regulator has denied recent claims that Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) will soon be blocked, but appeared to confirm that a crackdown (of sorts) is coming.

State media report that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday that new regulations on the VPN market would not affect "normal VPN usage" by multinational companies, organizations and expats. 

Per the Global Times:

[The ministry said] the regulations only target companies and individuals who conduct illegal cross-border operations without government approval and will not affect people's normal visits to foreign sites.

Adds Shine:

Since January 2017, China has been carrying out a regulation campaign in the VPN market, which is scheduled to end in March, to crack down on illegal and unlicensed VPNs. Unauthorized VPN services will be blocked from April, according to the regulation.

Under said new regulation, users would also be required to use approved providers, including China's major telecommunications firms China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. That might explain why — as the Financial Times  reported last month — regulators have allegedly begun pushing multinational companies to switch to "state-approved VPNs" as their current connections appear to have been disrupted.

READ MORE: Are Corporate VPNs Getting Disrupted in China?

Responding to concerns that using a state-approved providers puts business security and personal information at risk, MIIT chief engineer Zhang Feng assured that the country's telecom operators are simply offering VPN communications as "channels and service providers." 

“The rights for using normal intentional telecommunications services is strictly protected,” Zhang said, adding that the content of communications (i.e. emails or personal data) would be “secure and protected" under VPN regulations. According to Shine, carriers and government bureaus can't access this info.

“The campaign aims to regulate the market environment and keep it fair and healthy,” Zhang was also quoted as saying. “VPNs which unlawfully conduct cross-border operational activities, we want to regulate this."

Separately, the ministry also said that it "did not and cannot" force foreign firms to transfer their technology to China. 

READ MORE: Apple Turns Over China iCloud Services to State-Owned Data Firm

Apple removed over 600 VPN apps from its Chinese App Store last July.

The MIIT's statements this week come in the wake of several other recent reports from over the past year that indicate a full-on VPN crackdown is indeed coming to China soon.

Last month, employees of China Telecom denied reports that a VPN ban would be enforced starting January 11. The denials were in response to separate reports claiming China's commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) would block ports commonly used to allow VPN and software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) access for corporate customers who hadn't registered. The alleged notices did not indicate an exact date when the ports would be closed, nor did they address whether individuals using personal VPNs would be impacted.

READ MORE: China's VPN Crackdown Aimed at 'Illegal Users'

Prior to that, a July 2017 Bloomberg report — which was subsequently denied by the MIIT — claimed that China's three major telecom providers had been ordered to put a stop to all personal VPN use over their networks by February 1, 2018. 

Later, the MIIT insisted that new rules issued in January 2017 were specifically targeting 'illegal users' and 'unlicensed' business activity. Among the regulations was one which prevented domestic telecom firms and ISPs from setting up special lines such as VPNs without government approval. 

Speculation of an impending ban was then further fueled in July when major VPN software was removed from China's Apple App Store — 674 VPN apps, to be exact. 

And just a few months before that, Chongqing authorities released strict rules  stipulating that individual users and firms could be fined up to RMB15,000 if they were caught using a VPN. Some believed that similar measures could very well soon be rolled out across China.

It's unclear if all these recent developments confirm that the end is indeed nigh for 'jumping' the Great Firewall.

[Image via Quartz]

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