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Comment by x2398dh1 | Hacker News Reader

> "No unauthorized use of VPNs through March 2018."

I was wondering, "what just happened internally in China that they want to censor for a year or so?" Then it dawned on me...they want to censor everything until the 2018 Winter Olympics is over with. I was wondering if Trump had tweeted, "free Tibet," or something like that.

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This notice is something like a "campaign" in English, which starts now and lasts for one year until March 2018. The assumption here is that these issues would have been addressed by then.

The timing March 2018 does not carry significant value here, it just means the campaign period is slightly longer than one year.

> I was wondering, "what just happened internally in China that they want to censor for a year or so?"

I think, in general, they've observed the rise of populist movements in other countries and have decided they're not going to let that happen in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_National_Congress_of_the_...

What would the 2018 Winter Olympics have anything to do with anything?

At the 2008 Beijing summer olympics they actually reduced the censorship a little until the games were over.

But 2018 Winter Olympics are in South Korea. Not sure if you thought Beijing was hosting 2018, or if you thought that Beijing ups the censors every Olympics each time. https://www.pyeongchang2018.com

The 2018 games are in S. Korea, which could be problematic since China has banned all kpop, and Korean entertainment in general in response to S. Korea's missile defense upgrades [1].

It would be very difficult to cover the games without any singing or tv drama stars being on screen at some point. Not sure if the Olympics themselves would fall under "Korean entertainment" or not.

1) http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/11/29/china-bans-korean...

they don't want people to have access to inconvenient information. dates are inconsequential.

Dates and events are very consequential within Chinese censorship. Censorship gets ramped up and down over time with events. Data example:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/09/daily-c...

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