Chinese Programmer Ordered To Pay 1 Million Yuan For Using VPN 35
Amy Hawkins reports via The Guardian: A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1 million yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China's "great firewall." The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on August 18. The notice said Ma had used "unauthorised channels" to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company. The police confiscated the 1.058m yuan ($145,092) Ma had earned as a software developer between September 2019 and November 2022, describing it as "illegal income," as well as fining him 200 yuan ($27). Charlie Smith (a pseudonym), the co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that tracks internet censorship in China, said: "Even if this decision is overturned in court, a message has been sent and damage has been done. Is doing business outside of China now subject to penalties?"
more-or-less autarky+counterintelligence (Score:2)
It's getting real all over the world.
Re:more-or-less autarky+counterintelligence (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah they've been busted a few times here in Australia trying to "police" chinese-australian citizens. Needless to say, the aust govt isnt a fan of that.
For a country that likes to bang on about sovereignty, its no respector of it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: more-or-less autarky+counterintelligence (Score:2)
In Canada too.
Re: more-or-less autarky+counterintelligence (Score:1)
That's nonsense. They're not police stations at all.
betteridge's law? (Score:2)
"Is doing business outside of China now subject to penalties?"
as though it weren't before...
Re: (Score:3)
"Is doing business outside of China now subject to penalties?"
as though it weren't before...
Doing business outside China is not illegal.
The American company I work for employs people in China and has for twenty years.
The guy in TFA wasn't arrested for "doing business". He was arrested for circumventing the GFWOC. But the real reason was so that bureaucrats had an excuse to grab his income.
Re: betteridge's law? (Score:2)
Wouldn't the employees be doing the same thing if they VPN into your systems?
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Wouldn't the employees be doing the same thing if they VPN into your systems?
Yes but his company probably hires its people legally. VPN is the clickbait red herring to make the story interesting to guardian readers.
Re: betteridge's law? (Score:1)
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He got busted for working 'online' and not paying taxes.
Has most likely nothing to do with VPN or TGFWOC.
And he was not ordered to pay a 1million fine, his 1million in earnings got confiscated. The fine was 27yuang.
It is all in the summary.
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Circumventing the great firewall is a legally grey area in China. The firewall isn't the same everywhere either, for example around Shenzhen it's a lot more permissive because the tech companies based there need to access things like Western social media (for advertising and customer relations) and test tech that is destined for export markets.
The crackdown seems to be on individuals doing it. Naomi Wu was recently forced to stop using most Western platforms, for example. It's really shitty because she is a
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This is one of hundreds of things that are technically illegal in China but everyone does them all the time anyway, and you only get in trouble for it if you come to the attention (in a bad way) of some
Re: betteridge's law? (Score:1)
No
The headline is wrong.
He cut out the required middleman (Score:4, Informative)
130k € or 127k freedom $ (Score:2)
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Correction: China demands a middleman to make sure the Chinese government has an agent to steal any interesting information and control what Chinese citizens do.
Huh? (Score:2)
Doesn't every Chinese worker who works for a US or foreign company do this?
No he wasn't (Score:2)
He was fined $27 for using a VPN. He had his illegal income derrived from working for a Turkish company confiscated. That has zero to do with a VPN or the Great Firewall.
Re: (Score:2)
A nation afraid of its people... (Score:3)
is weak at the core.
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It's not all that different to how our governments are soiling themselves over the threat of misinformation from Russia, North Korea, China of course, and now Iran.
I'm not sure what's worse really. The government blocking it, or Facebook spreading anti-vaxx, election stealing, climate change denying misinformation. Of course the Chinese government is worse in terms of what it blocks, e.g. Tiananmen and the Uighur "re-education" camps, but things aren't great here either.
Re: A nation afraid of its people... (Score:1)
It's not, so there's that.
The Guardian said so? (Score:2)
It must be true.
Xi is working hard (Score:2)
Xi is working hard to erase the West's fears of a new Chinese-dominated world order, by killing his own economy. That's not his intention, of course, but it's the effect of these sorts of actions. And it's not like he doesn't know it, though I think he underestimates how bad it is. He sees the economic damage as a necessary cost of re-asserting social control.
I expect it to continue in this vein for another decade or two, until the economic harm of decoupling from the world is made incontrovertible, to th
Fake news (Score:1)
They're just pissed he didn't declare his taxes, so they confiscated his earnings.
*Unauthorised* vpn use is a minor infraction with a similarly sized fine.