No Scaling the Wall in Hubei
China has long sought to control what its citizens see online, restricting access to foreign platforms and content that might challenge the dominant framing, or “public opinion guidance” (輿論導向), of the Chinese Communist Party. Actions taken earlier this month by police in Hubei could be a sign that authorities are moving more concertedly against individuals using VPNs to bypass internet controls, a process referred to as “scaling the wall” (翻牆). On March 11, police in two Hubei cities published administrative penalty notices against individual citizens for doing exactly that.
On March 8 in the river city of Ezhou, a man was fined 200 yuan (about 27 USD) after authorities discovered he had used a proxy tool to access TikTok and X. In the nearby city of Xiaogan, ten police officers had raided a man’s home months prior for similar activity, resulting in a 500 yuan (69 USD) fine. In both cases, the men were issued formal administrative warnings (警告) and ordered to cease unauthorized international networking (責令停止聯網). Previously, law enforcement focused on developers and commercial operators of circumvention tools. Individual VPN use, while technically against the rules, was largely tolerated under a tacit understanding that citizens could bypass the firewall for personal purposes — accessing social media or foreign news — as long as they did not challenge the state. By some estimates, China has as many as 90 million VPN users.
