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Comment by notimetorelax | Hacker News Reader

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

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).

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