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While we have been in Beijing, the Chinese government announced that it would soon begin cracking down on the use of VPNs in the country. For those who do not know, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that allows many Chinese internet users to bypass China\u2019s Great Firewall, which restricts the content that users\u2019 Chinese users can access. For example, without VPNs, while in China, you cannot access foreign news outlets, search engines like Google, and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This issue is both cultural and political in nature. For one, without VPNs, the government can censor what information Chinese citizens have access to, so they will only see positive news about the government\u2019s activity. Also, Chinese people will essentially be cutoff from the rest of the world. Social media plays a key role in the Western world. It is a way to communicate, share ideas, spread news, etc. <\/span><\/p>\n Chinese people seen to be mostly upset with the loss of social connection. Younger people I spoke with expressed how they were disappointed that they would no longer be able to use Instagram and Twitter. Generally speaking, they were not upset that they would not receive uncensored news about their government. Chinese people do not seem to have the mindset that many Americans have where you question everything the government does. However, hundreds of thousands of people will be affected by this government action, both Chinese internet users and rest of the world who will no longer feel their presence. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While we have been in Beijing, the Chinese government announced that it would soon begin cracking down on the use of VPNs in the country. For those who do not know, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that allows many Chinese internet users to bypass China\u2019s Great Firewall, which restricts the content that … Continue reading VPN Crackdown<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3347,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3345\/revisions\/3347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}