China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Will it effectively widen the cognitive gap between people living there and the rest of the world? How many people in the country will take it to the street to protest against this administrative policy?
I think the term "mainland" is strange. To me it seems like marketing by the CCP, because nobody else thinks China consists of a mainland part and some other part. There's just China. Then there's another country, Taiwan.
If the VPN ban is effective, it won't affect most people. Most Chinese people are not aware there is a Chinese internet and a real one. But it will affect foreigners like me who live there because it's interesting. The internet is sabotaged in many ways in China, but it's tolerable. But if the GFW actually becomes extremely difficult to evade, living there will not be an option. People seem to already be discussing an exodus, e.g., in /r/China.
I think it will also make China even more like North Korea. If you go to China and talk to people, you'll find they have strange impressions about certain internet topics, like they might think Google products are very bad and unreliable. They think this because the GFW seems to have some sites in some kind of degraded mode.
There won't be protests. If you protest in China, you get arrested and subjected to trial by kangaroo court where "your" attorney is on the same team as the judge and prosecutor. If you are a persistent thorn in the CCP's side, you get disappeared and tortured. Maybe they return you to your family a few years later and 30 kg lighter and thoroughly traumatized.