This content was first published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
Residents in China have recently reported to Radio Free Asia that they are conducting area searches of people’s phones to find apps that will enable them to pass the Great Firewall of the government’s online censorship.
A Sichuan resident who used only the identity Huang for fear of reprisals claimed he had just been stopped on the metro in Chengdu, the provincial capital.
” This happened to me in Chengdu”, Huang said. On the train, a police officer stopped me and asked to check my phone, but I refused to let him.
He said,” I told him he had no law enforcement powers and he let it go.”
Chinese authorities have stepped up position checking operations on the streets and on public transportation in the years since the” white report” opposition movement , of 2022, which the authorities blamed on invasion by “foreign forces“, and have been forcing people to download an “anti- scam” app , that monitors their telephone usage, according to recent interviews.
Huang claimed that he has also witnessed police checking women’s apps on Beijing and Shanghai streets.
In a province in northeast China, a resident who used the identity Zhang for fear of reprisals claimed that police have increased related checks where he lives.
” You have to be quite secret to get around the Great Firewall”, Zhang said. It is against the law to use circumvention resources or access foreign sites.
” Frequently speaking, anyone tries to post photos that have come from outside the Great Firewall to WeChat”, he said. ” If you do, your profile may be blocked”.
He claimed that anyone who is “drink teas” with the feared state security police may have their phone checked routinely, which would require people to cancel for software or restore their factory settings to prevent discovery.
He claimed that while some uncensored content occasionally passes, there is n’t as much as there used to be before the current crackdown.
According to Huang, the” white paper” protests set off the current crackdown, which the authorities have targeted university students to stop people from getting content that has n’t been censored by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
You have to be very cautious, I tell you.
A cellular phone repair specialist in Guangdong, in the southern province of Guangdong, claimed that the police-approved “anti-fraud” app can also identify any phone with installed circumvention tools.
” As long as your telephone has the pro- fraud software installed, they will understand what you are doing”, she said.
” You have to be particularly cautious right now if you want to get around the Wall.”
A Hubei resident in the northern province of Hubei saw an SMS alert from the municipal police department advising them that their phone had been infected with online security software, in violation of the law.
According to the text message, the user was instructed to” stop and desist” or report to the neighborhood police station in the interest of taking additional “enforcement measures.”
According to a photo of the school’s administrative statement, a student at Sichuan’s Institute of Industrial Technology was just disciplined for “ignoring net security rules” and using software to repeatedly pass the Great Firewall between February 29 and March 11. According to the X citizen journalist account,” Mr. Li is not your teacher.”
They had accessed content on overseas websites and reposted it to two WeChat groups, which “violates the school’s student regulations”, the notice said.
The student was given a warning under the college’s disciplinary code, it said.
According to the journalist, China’s state security police began looking through the follower list and urging people to unfollow the account last month.
China’s Cyberspace Administration reported that it revoked the licenses of more than 10,000 websites in 2023 and sent in more than 10,000″ for interviews” as part of its aggressive campaign to remove unapproved content from Chinese social media platforms.
According to state news agency Xinhua, the websites were being targeted on Jan. 31 for” spreading false information, incite of confrontation, and other harmful content.”
