The VPN operators have been arrested. According to Chinese law, they should be sentenced by the court, but the police simply imposed fines without even appealing. According to Chinese regulations, the punishment should be less than three years of imprisonment, but they only issued fines. Isn’t China always claiming to govern by law? Why does it contradict itself in this matter?
Because enforcing laws in this case doesn’t benefit China. Most people using VPNs are just playing games or viewing adult content, and at most they curse the Chinese government out of frustration. These actions are harmless to the regime’s rule, so China isn’t really afraid of people bypassing the firewall or operating VPNs; whether they are sentenced or not isn’t important. The real goal of arresting VPN operators is to extract huge fines.
China’s current fiscal deficit is severe. For example, in the most aggressive county, Xiajin County, the fiscal revenue in the first half of 2024 was 572 million yuan, but expenditures reached 1.698 billion yuan. Under such circumstances, the economy struggles to operate, and the regime’s rule becomes unsustainable. Therefore, it desperately needs to increase revenue to overcome the crisis, which is why it is aggressively cracking down on VPN operators to extract large amounts of money.
For example, in the case of Gan Mouying, the local police didn’t appeal (appealing would mean a court sentence rather than a fine), but instead kept hinting that he should pay a 1 million yuan fine. Their continued pursuit of him is also for money. Similarly, other arrested VPN operators have been fined tens of millions of yuan.
This shows the attitude of China towards the law: essentially pragmatic, using laws when convenient, and discarding them when not. It’s not about rule of law at all.
Is the original link missing? I see the mention of “in the article…”, but there is no link to the other article. Additionally, I inserted an image into your post.
This is very accurate, because for Zhongxiu, VPNs have long been a well-known secret. Even if VPNs exist, very few people use them to bypass the firewall to go online, and most people use VPNs for gaming and viewing adult content, backed by bourgeois spiritual opium, so they feel assured. The Zhongxiu government even proactively lifted the restrictions on several of the largest foreign adult websites during the pandemic protests, which was praised within the petty bourgeois circle and spread with the tacit approval of Zhongxiu, because this benefits their rule.
This naturally reminds me of the flood of yellow advertisements when I searched for related information on Twitter during the Foxconn workers’ strike in Zhengzhou. I heard that the Chinese government would do this deliberately to cover up the news.
This has been their old trick, and more and more people are now aware of it. When they see ridiculous entertainment news or trivial matters trending, they ask, “What major event are they trying to cover up this time?”
Indeed, that’s the case. I remember that from some point, a large amount of meaningless “yellow news” appeared on the domestic internet, and many of them were even published by well-known official media. The so-called official media accounts have become just like marketing accounts, which is shocking. Later, some people made videos to satirize these issues, and everyone became aware of it.
