Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

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114 pointshker150 comments

The fine is actually 200 yuan, but the salary, over 1 million yuan, which he received while working remotely has been deemed as "illegal income" and subject to confiscation.

Having your income confiscated is very much a "fine".

Not really. Confiscating the illegal earnings is not part of the punishment, the fine is just the extra part.

What?! He did the work, likely diligently and with aplomb. He performed excellent work, in exchange for money.

And then a third party, the government, who had no part in this, took money from him. No matter how it was assessed, was a fine.

I disagree. I don't like the their govt rules, and I especially condemn their lack of rule of law and selective enforcement, but the fine is 200, and the rest is the confiscation of illegal earnings.

I do wonder where the employer is in this picture. Who are they? Do they not protect their employee? It's well known that VPN and GitHub is banned in China, did they make this netizen use the VPN and the illegal service knowingly? Did the netizen use these knowing it's illegal, or were they misled to believe they have legal access? Was the employee a remote contractor of sorts?

There is a difference, at least in China. Confiscation of properties can happen immediately while the fine has to be paid later. On the contrary, there was another piece of ridiculous news in China: in year 2022, an old farmer profited 14 yuan in buying (from a neighbour) then selling 35kilo of celery, which were later found to contain exceeding amounts of pesticide. His profit was confiscated, and he was fined 50K yuan! He never paid the fine since he couldn't afford it. The fine was doubled. Eventually the fine was waived when the law enforcement agency sought a property confiscation in lieu of the fine through the courts.

Let's not forget about others who got fined a bit more than 200 yuan of course (like dozens of years behind bars https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/student-sentenced-06...)

Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense.

Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenient.

EDIT: But I guess this guy didn’t have the option to report the income and pay his taxes? In that case it’s definitely another dimension of repression…

> But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud

And where in the world do you think this would not be the case? (except maybe in 3rd world countries with bribable authorities)

(such a fine of 100k is probably on the higher end for most places though)

In most of EU, the tax authority first asks you nicely to fix your mistake, and only if you don't, they confiscate the owed amount plus a small fine (given that it's your first offense and they don't see it as intentional fraud).

I used to have my life in serious disorder and they confiscated the owed tax three times from me. Never got fined more than $100, though I had to call and apologize the second and third time to have it reduced from ~$500.

Yeah, you're paying the tax owed, not much way around that unless you have allowed deductions or something else

But the higher fines/criminal charge are usually for very, very egregious failures to pay

> And where in the world do you think this would not be the case?

I think their point is precisely that this Chinese case might be more similar rather than different to the rest of the world.

> (such a fine of 100k is probably on the higher end for most places though)

In neither the Chinese case nor on the Swedish case does it seem to be a fine. It's rather a confiscation of illegal earnings, which is then followed by an actual fine.

Confiscation of owed income tax - sure. But the earnings? That's draconian. It's not illegal to work for foreign companies, even in China.

Sweden goes further than most western countries in this case though. For example, the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits dubble punishment for a single crime. Most European countries interpret this to mean that you can be either criminally prosecuted, or administratively sanctioned with "extra tax", but not both. Sweden however has a fondness for doing both.

So in Sweden a very realistic scenario in this case is that this guy goes to prison for half a year. During that time the tax authority decides he owes 100000 USD in taxes, and 100000 USD in "extra taxes". Whether he has the money or not is irrelevant. If it's more than he made, that's irrelevant. And the interest on those 200000 USD is 18.75%.

Also, you can't declare personal bankruptcy in Sweden, so this guy is essentially turned into a slave of the government: whatever money he makes is taken from him, except for a very small amount necessary to "exist". If he is a good slave for five years, his debts can be discharged. If not, then he's stuck in this situation forever. It's game over, economically.

Also, Sweden probably has a more efficient "bailiff authority" (Kronofogdemyndigheten) than most countries. So game over really is game over. They will come to your home, with the police if necessary, and take everything of value there.

Thats actually horrifying.

The lack of bankruptcy is especially scary.

> Also, Sweden probably has a more efficient "bailiff authority" (Kronofogdemyndigheten) than most countries. So game over really is game over. They will come to your home, with the police if necessary, and take everything of value there.

This might be a bit of silly question: but if someone were to “stand their ground” and try to defend themselves (with weapons they somehow obtained / 3D-printed / etc.) I imagine the Swedish authorities also wouldn’t hesitate in gunning that person down, right?

Sure. If you raise any kind of weapon to the Swedish police you can expect to be gunned down, regardless of circumstances.

You are overthinking. Why don't you simply marry into Tetra pack, IKEA, or Wallenberg families?! I doubt any bailiff dares to even send them a letter.

I have a friend in Sweden who is in the situation you described because of debt accrued by his father. It really is insane. I won't pretend I have any understanding of Swedish law but afaik in just about any other western country you can simply declare bankruptcy and you're more or less a free man once again.

Well to be fair, it's pretty common in EU that you can't bankrupt your way out of taxes, mandatory insurance, fines and other government fees.

This especially bites you in the states with mandatory universal health insurance scheme. The payment is based on your income in a given month/year - e.g. 30%. If you can't pay, your problem... Then, since you're in debt, they are not paying for your treatment. And there is no way to get out-of-the-system private health insurance, it simply doesn't exist. Hospitals have to treat you but the full price of treatment is added to your debt, no discounts are possible. People from the US never realize there are dark parts of the universal healthcare systems too. At least you can bankrupt out of your hospital debt in the US.

This is the reason why people just don't start business here. As an employee you're "safe" - the employer deducts your insurance payment from your wage and that's it, you're not investing into anything, not planning any cashflow.

Economic freedom is second among the freedoms only after physical safety. With enough money you can buy all the others, and all the others exist primarily to ensure you can be safe and end up with enough money.

This fact is ignored, overlooked, or pooh-poohed by those whose ambitions for society requires a large state.

To maximize human freedom, there's an optimal balance to be struck between a stateless society and one that'll prosecute you as you described. I think the optimum is far toward the "free" end of the spectrum.

China is very high on the economic freedom scale (setting up a business, taxation etc.); probably much higher than the US or Europe.

Sure, so economically free, besides the communism part

China is a typical state capitalist country.

You don't have the state looking after the wellfares of individuals, you are on your own all the time. $0 handouts during covid pandemic is the best example. You don't have unions stopping businesses and asking better pay & less working hours for its members.

Talking about communism, the US is getting there fast. Look at its current union movement, with both 2024 US presidential election candidates openly supporting those unions, man, it is communism, it is cancer.

If you want to make the point that the US is communist, unions are not a great example - they are few and very weak, with a couple exceptions (Police Unions). The US is way more similar to communism in the way the ultrarich accumulate benefits but socialize loses. Another big example is the military, which is essentially a socialist organization.

> If you want to make the point that the US is communist, unions are not a great example - they are few and very weak

wait a second. unions in the US are weak? what a huge joke! UAW stopped the production of US made cars, asking 40% wage increase. Yet that is weak?

let me tell you what is "weak" unions - in China, which implements state capitalism, unions represent the interests of the management & business owners, not workers & union members. Permanent contract is pretty much unheard of for labour workers, you won't get paid for working over time, 4 days per week communist style working hours is like 100 years away, you'd be luck if you don't need to work 7 days a week. you still pay your union fees, but you won't get anything from them, strike gets you into jail and your union bosses are going to kick your ass even before the arrival of police.

you got brainwashed by your "free" media. you've never ever experienced the brutal state capitalism, as you live in your lovely western communist society.

here in Shanghai, the economic capital of this state capitalist country called China -

* you don't get treated for medical conditions if you don't pay all those treatments in advance. pay your bill late kind of communist arrangement doesn't exist here.

* if you are a labour worker, you need to save like 500 years worth of your before tax income to buy a shitty & tiny apartment, that is right, you need to be start saving money before the independence of the communist US.

* can't afford to buy? no worries, just rent, 3 months rent plus 1 month bond and 1 month rent equivalent agent fee is the typical condition here. factor in the cost to move, you pretty much need 6 months rent worth of money to afford to rent.

* social housing you ask - people are going to laugh at you, that hasn't been invented yet. the state is the biggest land owner, residential land is auction to developers to build residential properties, why would any sane people working for the state to build social housing to undermine one of the largest income streams of the state?

* can't afford to rent and there is no social housing? well, homeless is not an option as that deteriorate the quality of investment environment of your city. you will be dealt with like a piece of trash.

angry about all these? well, they promote a few poster boys every year who managed to rise from the very bottom, they tell you something you probably heard it many times already - it is all about personal choices.

The UAW striking, and politicians showing support for unions is nothing new and doesn't suggest the USA is suddenly careening towards communism. You're either incredibly naive or have consumed some hysterical far-right news if you believe this.

When compared to China, the US is getting more and more like a communist country while China is getting more and more into state capitalism.

There are facts you just can't deny at all -

* far less income inequality in the US. A US software engineer working for Google/Apple/Amazon probably makes 3-5x more than a typical unskilled US worker, in China, a Chinese software engineer working for Alibaba/Tencent/Huawei can easily make 30-50x wage of a typical unskilled Chinese worker.

* no union movements in China, they even banned The Internationale. the US is seeing wide spread strikes in many key sectors. this is eye opening for many Chinese.

* no covid handouts in China, you are always on your own. numerous communist style handouts in the US during covid, that caused extremely high inflation and the current demand for wage increases & strikes.

* free COVID-19 medicine in the US, full price out of your own pocket here in China. I paid two packs of Paxlovid back in Feb, cost me $600 USD and it was like winning the lottery to be able to buy them online, I had to try multiple time a day for two weeks, it sold out within seconds each time.

* far more social welfares in the US, tons of real public hospitals & social housing. here in China, if you don't have enough money, you won't get shocked by your medical bill because you will never be tested or treated in the first place. you are always on your own. by the US standard, there is 0 public hospital in China, no hospital is fully or even half government funded, all those so called Chinese public hospitals have to source their fundings on their own.

I suggest you look up what "communism" actually is - it's much more than "the government slightly helps you sometimes"

Weakness is a comparative thing. I’m European. Compared to Europe, American unions barely register. You gave an example where one union did something big one in the US once. Still small and weak compared to Europe. Unions can stop the economy of whole countries for 2 weeks if they get really pissed. Often with support from the rest of the population.

I’m not trying to downplay how things are in China by any means, and I believe that the “brainwashing” accusation wasn’t merited. It’s a “elephant vs dog vs ant” situation.

So? The parent is Chinese. Their point is that Chinese unions are much weaker than US ones. What does Europe have to do with that?

I started my first comment with "If you want to make the point that the US is communist", implying that that was what I was addressing. I think that the argument still holds. That is independent on how comparatively worse or better things are in China. Because we can look at the US in isolation and still find better examples.

That is not true. You are only allowed to setup businesses that are considered as in non-key sectors. Try setting a private gas station, or an ISP. Good lucky for that. The most recent example is the private tutor business, setting a private tutor business helping kids to do better in their maths exams can get you into big big trouble with the state.

We are talking about an economy that didn't allow people to freely trade salt less than 10 years ago.

Around here setting up a sausage stand is tightly regulated.

Granted. I don't know of any remotely reasonable (non-politicized) comparable study of economic freedom in China; my assessment is from talking to people (expats, entrepreneurs etc.) and just looking at what was going on.

I remember sitting at a restaurant in a small village and watching a local drone company doing testing on the parking lot. 4 engineers and a drone the size of a small car.

Just no way that would be allowed in anywhere in Europe.

Europe isn't a bastion of economic freedom - a previous commenter described an absolutely egregious amount of government overreach pertaining taxes.

> Around here setting up a sausage stand is tightly regulated.

Around here, setting up a sausage stand requires special approval from the Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China. That is the exact special & emergency arrangement they put forward during COVID - people were allowed to setup such stands in selected areas during weekends to boost economy during COVID.

What about before COVID?

There is a dedicated government department tasked for cracking down all those street vendors/stands, it called the urban management department. It is the department that has the lowest public approval rating in China with its staff regularly engage in brutal violence against those trying to setup a stand on the streets to make a living.

Their (stupid) logic is simple - such stands / street food vendors degrade the overall investment potentials, as no one wants their multi billion investment project to be surrounded by thousands of street food vendors.

welcome to state capitalism.

China is a has a very statist economic system with limited economic freedom for consumers.

To list a few examples - urban property cannot be owned outright by any non-state entity, Chinese citizens are heavily restricted from investing overseas, and foreign investment/media consumption is also limited.

A question on the ownership of property in china and how it relates to the "nail" houses often seen in pictures.

While I am sure real property ownership is weaker in china, The propaganda is I assume based on a exaggerated version of the truth. I also have never seen a public works project held up so dramatically by a single reluctant owner. Usually the government will claim eminent domain and poof, there go all your so called real property ownership rights, up in smoke.

What is it about these cases that that a person in a communist state(where by definition no one owns property(yes I know this is not strictly true but for the sake of the question hear me out)) apparently has stronger property guarantees than than our ownership centric capitalist state?

My concern with Chinese property rights is the nature of the land use right rather than the respect those rights receive for from the government.

For example instead of buying a house in China, people obtain residential land use rights from the local authority for a period of up to 70 years [1]. AFAIK this translates to a 70 year leasehold contract in British, which isn't that much. It's very possible, in theory, to 'purchase' a house in China and have be unable to live in it within your lifetime.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law_in_China

This is easily proved wrong

China is in position 154 https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

"Oh but China, oh but Europe, oh blah blah blah" try actually establishing a company on the lower bottoms of the rank

https://www.networkideas.org/news-analysis/2005/06/index-of-...

Using the Heritage Foundation's ranking is quite misleading.

Economic freedom can only be enforced with police, meaning the state protecting the assets of the rich. So no, it's not as simple as you say.

My comment clearly, if not explicitly, makes allowance for police.

Perhaps that is why they explicity did not even try to say it was simple, and explicitly spoke of a scale with stateless at one end and the optimum somewhere between the ends.

there was no "as simple as you say"

Your entire argument is nonsensical, but this part:

> With enough money you can buy all the others

is particularly easily falsifiable. A billionaire in China does not have freedom of speech and cannot buy it.

I'd love to see your well-developed argument against economic freedom.

Our billionaire Chinese friend can escape to the free world, or buy political influence at home.

Did you just use freedom to escape the system as an argument in favour of the system?

Or what is your point here?

> Or what is your point here?

That with enough money, all of the other needs can be fulfilled one way or another?

> Our billionaire Chinese friend can escape to the free world

Unless you threaten the authoritarian leader via, for example, having too much money or saying negative things. Where, for example, is Jack Ma? He used to be very focal and visible until his disappearance, but nowadays he is allegedly peacefully enjoying his retirement with painting. According to Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, Jack Ma "is fine. He is lying low right now. I talk to him every day. I actually message him, we have our own messaging platform. He is actually doing very very well. He's taken up painting as a hobby. It's actually pretty good. I can show you some photos later." [1]

I still haven't seen any interviews with Jack Ma since his dissapearance where is he is not surrounded by multiple guys in black suits.

[1] https://youtu.be/KveMLJNhwkc?si=dGJbujD-57FlHpNP

He travels afaik - he did a lecture in Tokyo on entrepreneurship - his family is back home in China so there is no risk for the govt.

He lost more than half his wealth and was pushed out of Ant, all just after mysteriously vanishing for some time [0].

Those in China who have power and criticize the PRC are swiftly punished for it and stripped of that power. I know "freedom of speech" is a term that's been significantly watered down in common parlance, but this is the poster child of not having it.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/business/china-jack-ma-wealth...

What about: MacLean, Assange, Manning, Snowden, Crane, Swartz, Drake?

McCarthyism? The entire Twitter Files exposé? Arrests over social media arguments (I'm recalling cases particularly in the UK).

Both in the US and in Western Europe there's been a frightening and ever faster decay of freedom of speech over the past years.

We were talking about free speech (or the lack there of) in China so I fail to see how any of this is relevant. None of it makes speech any freer in China, none of this means money can save you, none of this is OK or should be tolerated.

I'm going to assume you are arguing in good faith, but FYI such "whataboutisms" are the go to defence of bad faith actors when any criticism of China is brought up.

> Our billionaire Chinese friend can escape to the free world, or buy political influence at home.

That didn’t work for Jack Ma.

Jack Ma is kind of a special case though, as he seemed to feel he was a special case that could get away with challenging the CCP.

While he was still living in China.

Maybe a case of high INT stat, but low WIS?

> Our billionaire Chinese friend can escape to the free world

probably because they enjoy the prison food in the free world. check what happened to Guo Wengui.

> or buy political influence at home.

Jack Ma and Hui Ka Yan won't agree with your comments above.

> Our billionaire Chinese friend can escape to the free world, or buy political influence at home.

This is probably easier for a Chinese millionaire that a Chinese billionaire.

If any of the Chinese big tech guys moved to Australia I imagine it cause a bit of a scandal.

> If any of the Chinese big tech guys moved to Australia I imagine it cause a bit of a scandal.

And the scandal would be “Nobody has had any news from <tech guy> for the past ten days, suspicions of forced disappearance creates diplomatic tensions between Australia and China” or something like that.

I'm not arguing against economic freedom, I'm arguing against your argument in favor of economic freedom. And I'm arguing against you ranking it higher than, say, freedom of speech.

Ask Jack Ma from Alibaba how that ended for him - he never realized he was just in a bigger gilded cage than the other folks in China.

Primarily due to a lack of economic freedom. If a billionaire in the west (or even just an ordinary wealthy or high income person) doesn’t like how oppressive their government is, they can just take their wealth and productivity to a place they’re more happy with. A wealthy Chinese person has far less property rights over their wealth, they’re absolutely not free to remove it from the country, and their continued access to it relies on continued approval from the CCP.

Totally. Did Jack Ma really have that wealth to begin with?

Money isn't yours if you can't spend or move it.

Yes, wealth can mitigate attacks on your freedom. But for everyone to financially maintain their other freedoms requires a degree of economic freedom not afforded by basically any country on earth. Instead we mostly have managed fiat currencies that are continually inflated, vacuuming real wealth towards a politically-connected center, and making it so that only a fraction of the population can ever be capable of amassing enough wealth to purchase freedom. So your argument is a bit specious in the world we actually have, and ignoring that it falls apart is a recipe for justifying oppression.

Coming at it from another direction, I'd say that government guarantees of freedom are essentially non-fungible assets that resist the ability for lopsided/captured/coercive markets to financially strip them.

"If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria."

This applies to the context of west vs China. Everything China does is because of oppression and everything the west does is because of democracy and protecting you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_miser Folks prefer simple mental models and tend to place their faith in simpler beliefs. Kahneman warned us. In fact, the replication crisis sort of proved him right (and wrong at the same time?)

That is such an awesome quote - where does it come from ???.

Allegedly: https://library.fairmontstate.edu/news/1/Friedrich-Nietzsche...

Absolutes are far from helpful in this conversation.

There's a fair bit of nuance in this topic, but it can be argued that a totalitarian regime whose primary interest is remaining in power will resort to more oppressive measures towards its citizens than one that at least has some semblance of respecting human rights and democratic processes. This doesn't mean that there aren't things to praise and criticize about both sides, but _overall_ one system of government is demonstrably more benevolent, to its own citizens, at least.

What I'm really tired of, though, is everytime there's news about something worth criticizing about China, these comparisons with the West are mentioned. It only serves to muddle the conversation, which can be seen as the intent of whoever brings it up.

One of the most important interests if not the primary interest of a democratically-chosen government is to remain in power as well.

We should be an absolute beacon of morality and principles with a stellar track record to criticise (or even, instill change through violence in) in other countries. That is not the case yet, so let's work on that.

> We should be an absolute beacon of morality and principles with a stellar track record to criticise ... other countries. That is not the case yet, so let's work on that.

I completely disagree. We can have many problems but when another country, say, invades another one, we should respond appropriately. Waiting until everybody becomes crystal will never work because it's never going to happen.

> (or even, instill change through violence in)

This is a completely different issue, and it is always wrong, no matter who does it, whether it's CIA in South America or Putin's agents in Ukraine. I haven't seen a single case where "instilling change through violence" brought any benefit, but I saw several cases where it completely ruined whole countries, see the so-called Arab spring.

> I haven't seen a single case where "instilling change through violence" brought any benefit

The American Revolution? The Civil War?

> What I'm really tired of, though, is everytime there's news about something worth criticizing about China, these comparisons with the West are mentioned. It only serves to muddle the conversation, which can be seen as the intent of whoever brings it up.

They do this because this is the most efficient strategy that works every time - not just in Internet discussions but also in political debate. Look what happens whenever any of atrocities committed by Russia hits the news again - you can be 100% sure that one of the first comments will be something about the USA bombing Sarayevo or Syria etc. Some of these accusations do make sense (like the invasion of Iraq on false premises), some don't (like in Yugoslavia where NATO pretty much stopped the war and "ethnic cleansing" i.e. mass murder). But it doesn't matter: the person who threw the bait have successfully managed to deter the conversation away from the problematic issue and made it someone else's problem.

I have to agree, this rhetoric has been exceedingly common nowadays.

It's stunning to see how many so-called liberals nowadays have little in common with the liberals of the 2000s, sometimes even the complete opposite. I recall standing against censorship, governmental abuse, american imperialism, and many other values to be firmly entrenched in the liberal camp when I was coming-of-age politically speaking back in the US.

I don't see any correlation between your and the Chinese case.

As far as I understand this is not about tax evasion, it's about "illegally" using a vpn to access GitHub which is blocked by the Chinese government.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub

> But I guess this guy didn’t have the option to report the income and pay his taxes?

He has the option. I'm not sure if he did it though.

The problem here is it was confiscated arbitrarily, it's not tax authority doing all that.

Some context which may be relevant: many local governments in China are in heavy debt, and they need more income: police have been collecting more and more fines, causing some outrages [1]. There are reports that many civil servants are unpaid for months (in Tianjin [2] and other cities [3][4]), in addition to getting heavy wage cuts [3][5].

A penalty of over 1 million yuan (>145K USD) for using VPN is a new development: before this, only VPN service sellers were prosecuted.

[1]: Law-enforcement agencies have been imposing larger and more frequent fines for offenses: https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-local-governments-are... "China’s Police Are the New Earners for Cash-Strapped Governments"

[2]: https://eightify.app/summary/chess/tianjin-government-crisis... "The Tianjin government's financial crisis, with unpaid wages and high debt ratios, reflects a larger problem in China's declining land finance and unsaleable real estate market, raising concerns about the stability of other Chinese cities."

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=242pUa9rXgg "Civil Servants go unpaid and Local Government Borrowed From Temples/Protests surge in China"

[4]: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wages-09082023112323.... "Chinese local governments struggle to pay civil servants' wages"

[5]: The government is trimming a combination of bonuses, cash subsidies and base pay for many employees, according to interviews with 10 local civil servants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-12/pay-cuts-... "Bankers’ 40% Pay Cuts Show the China Dream Fading in Its Richest Cities"

Indeed the fine was only 200 yuan in this case

So this is because local authorities are short on money? Surely there would be more money in fining people for jaywalking or driving without a bicycle helmet?

yeah they do have other ways to fine, this particular one became popular because 1M is considered too much and too ridiculous.

Tianjin and much of Hebei are kind of basket cases. Tianjin is where the tallest under construction sky scraper in the world is, and I don’t think I’ve ever visited that city (first time in 1999) without seeing a couple unfinished very tall buildings. Chengde I’ve never been to but I can imagine it also has Beijing-sized ambition without having Beijing-sized economic activity.

It's important to keep into perspective that China is a 1.4Bn people's country and highly decentralized (much to the chagrin of the pro-US). This happened under the "Chengde" administration. There might be many reasons for this: Chengde is over-zealous, The police has a particular issue with a particular individual, the central state wants some examples, the local state wants to show its toughness on VPN, the local state needs some tax money and is pillaging, etc..

Thanks, but I feel that you didn’t finish your thought. Why is that important to consider it in this context?

It sounds like he's saying this is not an abuse of the central government, but by a local one. I doubt VPNs are illegal in China in general.

I think they are, no? Otherwise the Great Firewall is kinda pointless.

The firewall also blocks popular VPNs. I got NordVPN before I went and it did not work. My backup VPN on a linode worked - but they would cut it after a bit.

> I doubt VPNs are illegal in China in general.

This is a gray area. While people said that the law is only about illegal physical network gateways, in reality the government did sentence people providing VPN services. I think the point they want to make is that even if this is illegal, the penalty in this case is kind of ridiculous.

Using VPNs is very different from selling VPN services for profits.

No one got arrested for building & releasing open source VPN software on github.

VPNs are illegal in China in general, but China isn’t a rule of law country so that in itself isn’t very meaningful (free speech is guaranteed by the Chinese constitution for example, but that’s irrelevant). VPN usage is rarely prosecuted unless they want to get you on something (a basic thing in rule by law).

> VPN usage is rarely prosecuted unless they want to get you on something (a basic thing in rule by law).

If they really want to get you on something, using vpn won't be the good excuse anyway as the max penalty is way too low. it is like $100 fine plus maybe up to 2 weeks in detection. in fact, 2 weeks detection for using vpn is unheard of, a few days is already extremely rare.

It is like jaywalking & argued with the driver on the road which cause the traffic to be stopped for 1-2 minutes kind of offense.

Again, everything in law text doesn’t matter. They will probably pile a bunch of other things on top of it, but if you don’t use a VPN they’ll just get you on something else. More importantly, VPN use opens you up to a bunch of liability that they can pry a bunch of other things from you.

It’s more like being prosecuted for “Treason and jaywalking”.

By your logic, doesn’t not enforcing some law make any country not be a “rule of law country”? By that principle, would most western countries failing to properly enforce drug make them be not “rule of law” countries?

I think the parent’s logic is the other way around: the rule of law isn’t overwhelmingly relevant in China, so it’s no surprise the VPN law isn’t enforced. You may want to contend if China has the rule of law, but that’s the premise in the parent message, not the conclusion, so you need to use something else to raise objections toward it.

> By that principle, would most western countries failing to properly enforce drug make them be not “rule of law” countries?

It isn't binary. Whenever the Supreme Court in the USA makes a ruling on a 1st amendment case, remember that China has exactly the same amendment in its constitution. But ya, law interpretation and enforcement fall down, especially with respect to shoplifting and drug use, things that would be dealt with strongly in China (because context) and less strongly in the west (because context).

So it doesn't give you the idea that China is clamping down on software developers. Unless there is an on-going trend, this is an independent move by some administration out there.

Well of course the emperor can never be at fault, it's always the evil generals and advisors ;)

Good tsar, bad boyars

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of CCP’s mouthpiece Global Times, wrote a Weibo post questioning the confiscation. His Weibo post was later deleted. [0]

Whether the post was deleted by himself or by a censor, the central government is complicit in banning VPN and this is more than an independent move by a local government (unless you think the local government has substantial influence on Hu Xijin or the censor).

In fact another Guangdong man was also fined in 2018 for using VPN [1]. All these are in addition to prosecution of sales of VPN [2][3]. What makes you think this is an independent move by a local government?

[0] https://tw.news.yahoo.com/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E7%A8%8B%E5%BC%...

[1] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003431

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinese-man-arrested-after-mak...

[3] https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-entrepreneur-sentenced-to-over...

You tried to prove these are not independent moves by providing a few incidents out of a 1.4 billion country over a span of several years.

One comment in the first article you linked said 99% of software engineers in china use github.

The CCP is 100% aware that people use vpn to access foreign websites.

> CCP is 100% aware that people use vpn to access foreign websites

And Washington is 100% aware that people do crack. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a systematic law enforcement effort to stamp it out. Just because Beijing isn’t squishing every last developer doesn’t mean China hasn’t fundamentally changed since Xi became dictator.

If they really want to catch these people, you wont be seeing only a few examples over half a decade. As mentioned in the article, even Hu Xijin (the former editor-in-chief and party secretary of the conservative popular media Global Times) has a youtube channel. Most top universities like tsinghua, SJTU and tech companies like alibaba have official github accounts.

There is no way to implement complete censorship without killing your own tech industry.

> unless you think the local government has substantial influence on Hu Xijin or the censor

They do.

> much to the chagrin of the pro-US

I know we're in the midst of a cold war, but you don't have to be "pro-US" to be critical of an authoritarian regime.

I don't actually understand the Chinese rules on uncensored internet access.

When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet. Surely this is according to Chinese rules.

Likewise all the expats and Chinese I have met all used whatever they wanted of US social media plus they had a shit ton of pirated(?) American TV shows and movies.

Perhap the policies are changing? I don't know but this particular case sounds like a very modest fine (200 yuan) for using a VPN and sizeable fine for not reporting (and being taxed on) a foreign income.

> I don't know but this particular case sounds like a very modest fine (200 yuan) for using a VPN and sizeable fine for not reporting (and being taxed on) a foreign income.

I read this kind of comments in mainland's internet forums as well. People opposing this theory said that it should be the national tax authority handling this, not a local police department. Considering the local government did something crazy previously as well (collect fees from local corporations by threatening them), this seems like a problem with the local government instead of a nation-wide thing.

Taxes in China are collected locally. There is no IRS in China, each city (or province? I’ve never worked in a province before) will collect income taxes and then send off a large portion to the central government. Since the central government usually has a huge take on income taxes and VAT, localities are often very starved for funding (they used to make most of their budget via land transfer and development fees).

My understanding is that there's is an entirely legal official channel. All the tech companies use that to access GitHub, for example. Likewise for some universities and hotels.

It's an important detail that this guy is using VPN to work from home, not at work for a company.

> When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet.

This is because when you are roaming, the data traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel to your carrier. There's not much China can do without completely blocking roaming traffic. It's not a big deal though because vast majority of Chinese people don't have access to a foreign mobile line. As long as China can control what 99% of the population can access, it's already a win.

The rules are foreigners are allowed to use VPNs, and foreign mobile phones aren’t censored at all. Chinese nationals are forbidden from using VPNs, but similarly to how piracy is illegal and can lead to large fines in the US, Some people use VPNs without being caught.

China censors the Internet because it doesn’t want its citizens to receive information from outside or unite together without its control. Censoring foreigners is not useful for either purpose so they don’t bother.

The way international roaming works, is similar to a VPN back to your home cellular network on the back end, this all happens transparently to the user. You can verify this whilst traveling if you browse to any site using IP geolocation, it will think you are in your home country.

I lived in China for 9 years and my VPNs were always broken, to the point that I only used Facebook at work (since we had our own line). Most of my foreigner friends were in similar boats, being programmers none of us were technology illiterate.

You can find pirated American TV shows and movies on china’s internal internet. No need for a VPN. Quite the opposite really, it’s much harder to find those things outside of China.

$138,000 USD

Also an Archive link because the site timed out for me,

http://web.archive.org/web/20231006045251/https://here.news/...

Well it’s around 3 years of his earnings which is probably a more meaningful csbenchmark.

China is not a country anyone should be doing business with, let alone visiting. The level of human rights abuses and the potential for extra judicial actions make it far too dangerous.

I will never understand China or Chinese people.

I feel the same about HN, sometimes.

There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.

China has literally already built the second largest tech sector on the planet on restrictions like this

China has a thriving hardware industry. Partially built on not enforcing restrictions.

The rest of their tech sector is so-so. They do have a big internal market and a population eager for technology. It would be interesting to tease apart how much the restrictions hinder in some places, and perhaps help in a few others.

I kinda wonder how do you evaluate a thriving software economy in China's case.

A bit like Japan, I feel they're not going straight at the OS vendors (Microsoft/Apple) as these will bend over backward to accomadate them anyway, and in every area they've been actively blocked they made their own rival version (e.g. cloud services)

Is there anything we can point at to say "Chinese don't have the skills to do it" ?

How anyone can look at over a billion unique people and say "Chinese this" or "Chinese that" is as far beyond me as anything.

I think I'd take a "Ethiopians can't build an AWS rival", even if Ethiopians are unique and intelligent.

But that wouldn't be true for China (don't know market sizes, but I'd assume Tencent's cloud offering for instance is somewhat viable ?)

Ethiopians may not, but Indians and to a lesser extent, Nigerians can.

The next economic boom after Asia will be in West Africa.

...why couldn't Ethiopians build an AWS rival? Google can't build an AWS rival because (ultimately) AWS already exists in the market and has economies of scale. If Ethiopia banned AWS I cannot think of a single reason a cloud hosting provider with perhaps smaller data centers due to the smaller size of the market would show up in Ethiopia.

Of course, you can't make universal claims, because there are enough outliers.

But you can easily talk about averages and about statistical distributions.

Eg I'm fairly confident in saying 'the typical Chinese person eats a fair amount of rice'.

In the same way that anything done in America is reduced to 美国人 in China.

That weird to say. Many of the SWEs working on OS in the west are Chinese. They have the skills, but it’s just too easy for China to use Android or Linux, or to get the nice Apple experience, then to spend much investing in making their own OS for nationalistic reasons. They have larger problems in terms of semiconductor development and jet turbines that need gobs of resources and have much more national security impact.

Linux is an interesting example. There's no need to make your own Linux, because no sanctions etc can keep you from using Linux.

That's also part of why eg the US hasn't needed to make their own Linux. There's no risk that your Linux supply chain will be cut off in case of a war.

They built it by kicking everything else out of their internal market. It’s however questionable how competitive they are on the global stage.

Take Baidu Maps it launched in 2005, by 2016 it had 348 million users per month, but was still limited to China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now days it covers the world but a foreign user finds the UI is still largely in Chinese rather than being localized.

That’s just one example, but it’s obvious large swaths of their tech sector only exist because of protectionism.

Google was hardly kicked out in 2010. And in 2018 they were going to re-enter under essentially the same political conditions (Dragonfly), but it was pressure from American politicians/the public that deterred them from doing so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

Protectionism need not be binary. As one example, Chinese users of Google and many foreign companies websites hosted inside China experienced random slowdowns making them significantly less appealing to users. This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China.

I remember when those complaints surfaced. However, re:

> This is distinct from the blanket slowdown users experience when they access foreign websites from within China

... I'm reasonably sure that happened after Google's exit from China, and the slowness complaints were about accessing Google services outside the GFW either in HK or abroad. (Not all Google services overseas were blocked: for example, Google+ was accessible albeit unreliable and slow.) I don't recall any slowness complaints about Google.cn (which was hosted inside China) when it was still a thing.

Google.cn would put you in a penalty box sometimes depending on what you searched for, so would Google.HK, I assume that was happening via the GFW and not via Google itself, but Google could have been complicit? Bing did the same thing, but eventually Bing.cn was harmonized and I didn’t have to worry about penalty boxes anymore.

Yes, but the restrictions have mostly been a thin veil for programmers. If this trend continues, we will see the real effects of GFW on China software development.

If you take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world. And still moving faster, it feels.

> take e.g. the drone industry, they are like 10 years ahead of the Western world

These developments started before Xi became dictator. That’s a turning point for China. Today, Chinese drones are no longer a class ahead of their peers. Which is surprising, because they once were.

> Today, Chinese drones are no longer a class ahead of their peers.

They are more like 3-4 classes ahead, yes. The gap keeps increasing, it's quite amazing.

Or was that not your point?

> are more like 3-4 classes ahead, yes

On what metric? The only one I can think of is cost, which is still within an order of magnitude ahead on account of economies of scale and efficiency of production. On raw capability, this is totally incorrect.

> On what metric?

Do you have one kind of drone that DJI produces (mini, mavic, phantom, matrice, ...) that you would not choose over... well over anything else?

I mean without political considerations (like commercial war and the fact that DJI got banned in the US, exactly because nobody can compete). Just based on the product.

Yet various government agencies sidestep the GFW and use banned social media. Bizarre

To name a few:

Chinese Foreign Ministry https://twitter.com/foreignchinese?lang=en

Xi's Moments (official news of Xi Jinping and China) https://twitter.com/XisMoments

From the article:

"One Twitter user raises an important perspective on the incident, highlighting that there are legitimate pathways with private VPNs, including obtaining internet access permits and operating licenses, for information to flow from terminals to networks."

To get out of the prison you just need to fill in this form and hand it to the guards who’ll then approve or reject it at their discretion.

Microsoft China has its own line into and out of China via China telecom that isn’t through the GFW, all legal and they wouldn’t be able to do anything in China otherwise. I’m sure lots of foreign companies have similar arrangements.

The price is overheight, not suit for a small business

1M Yuan is roughly 137,000 USD.

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