Since February, the authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on "circumventing the Great Firewall." This campaign is notably harsher in both characterization and intensity than previous ones, with some commentators calling it a "zero-tolerance" campaign against VPN use. Multiple internal urgent notices show that Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Guangdong, and other provinces are carrying out a sweeping "internet cleanup," banning all VPN-related business at data centers and prohibiting connections to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries. On April 7, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology urgently summoned the three major carriers — China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom — to discuss "strengthening management of illegal cross-border dedicated-line connections to the internet." Within a matter of days, an entire chain of controls has tightened rapidly. Some data centers have admitted that the authorities' goal is nothing less than total elimination of VPN use.
What stands out most in this round of crackdown is the abandonment of euphemism at the rhetorical level. In past years, the authorities never really stopped cleaning up cross-border business at data centers inside China, but they typically used technical-sounding terms such as "traffic redirection," "network optimization adjustments," or "network security risks." Such language gave carriers some room to maneuver, and allowed many "transit hubs" to survive in the cracks. Now the wind has shifted entirely: the defining feature of this crackdown is that it names the target directly — regulatory directives explicitly target VPN violations for rectification, no longer using line maintenance as a pretext, no longer pretending it's a technical glitch, and cutting connections outright in a clean sweep, with no more coyness. When circumventing the wall is put openly on the table for a targeted campaign, it means the rules have moved from ambiguity to stark, cold clarity.
This concentrated crackdown on VPN use is not simply an upgrade of the authorities' technical governance — it is the inevitable path of the CCP's ever-tightening control apparatus. In February of this year, the authorities' so-called "Cybercrime Prevention Law" already sent a clear signal, bringing VPN use — long confined to a gray zone — explicitly within the scope of control; that step amounted to formal characterization. By April, the crackdown on data-center facilities, the cleanup of cross-border dedicated lines, the summoning of the three major carriers, and the explicit targeting of VPN use at the rhetorical level together constituted a full rollout at the enforcement level — that is, implementation. Legislation first, enforcement after, with campaign-style mobilization sandwiched in between: this rhythm is nothing new — it is the CCP's traditional method of authoritarian governance.
What truly deserves attention is not merely the intensity, but the change in method. In the past, internet control resembled a kind of "technical patching"; this round has clearly shifted toward a comprehensive clean sweep, bringing underlying resources such as data centers and bandwidth directly under the logic of control. At the same time, rhetorical concealment is disappearing — what was once technical jargon has been replaced by the blunt naming of "circumventing the wall," now formally designated as a target for elimination. This "de-camouflaging" is itself a clear signal that the focus of the authorities' internet governance has shifted from "maintaining a normal appearance" to "strengthening substantive control."
Why would the authorities choose, at this particular moment, to handle VPN use in such a sweeping fashion? The immediate trigger is a change in scale. A craze for cheap proxy access that erupted broadly in March may well be the direct spark for this crackdown. In the past, circumventing the wall was largely a niche activity, confined to a group with both the technical skill and the informational need. Now that hundreds of thousands, even millions, of ordinary users can easily access overseas information resources under cover of this craze, circumventing the wall is no longer a gray-area hobby of a small minority — it has become a mass, everyday need, and the old mechanism of "limited tolerance" has ceased to function. Because once scale crosses a certain threshold, the symbolic meaning of the "wall" is diminished, even losing its power to deter.
In this situation, the CCP's governing logic shifts from "selective control" to "total suppression." This is not entirely a response to specific behavior — it is, more than anything, a preemptive measure against the "possibility of losing control." Because at this point it inevitably touches on the fatal weak point of any authoritarian system: the regime's own sense of insecurity.
In a totalitarian political system, where the interests of a single family, clan, or party override the interests of the state, the nation, and the citizenry, the so-called stability of the regime is necessarily understood as a state that must be continuously maintained, rather than one that arises naturally. This is especially true under Xi Jinping's rule, where "anticipating risk in advance" and "bottom-line thinking" have become core governing principles. This mode of thinking tends to bring potential uncertainties under control preemptively, even before those uncertainties have turned into actual threats.
Seen from this angle, the problem of circumventing the wall is not merely a matter of information flow — it is a systemic variable tied to cognitive boundaries, public discourse space, and even social expectations. Once information sources become diversified and narrative frameworks become multi-centered, the stability of the CCP's single, unified narrative may be undermined. Tightening control over information is therefore, in essence, a re-assertion of control over cognitive space.
At the same time, downward pressure on the economy provides a real-world impetus for this tightening trend. When the economy is in an upward cycle, social discontent can be partly absorbed by expectations of growth; but when growth slows or even stagnates, the openness of information may amplify comparative effects and feelings of inequity. The outside world offers not only different information, but also a frame of reference — comparisons of income, welfare, institutions, and opportunity subtly reshape people's expectations. In this context, tightening the flow of information cannot solve the underlying economic problems, but it can, to some degree, cushion the cognitive shock triggered by those problems.
In the short term, tightening the flow of information can indeed strengthen the authorities' control over society. The problem is that it almost inevitably brings new consequences that destabilize the regime. On one hand, costs keep rising. The technical structure of the information age dictates that the contest between blocking and circumvention is, by its very nature, an endless war of attrition. Every escalation demands a greater investment of resources, while the returns diminish at the margin. Control itself gradually evolves into a high-consumption undertaking.
On the other hand, social stratification will be further entrenched — a widening gap in cognition and opportunity will form between those able to obtain "whitelist" access or special channels and those completely cut off. More importantly, it will gradually alter behavioral patterns across the whole of society, continuously eroding the legitimacy of the regime's rule. When accessing information is generally treated as a potential violation, the rules the regime sets no longer reflect the public interest — they become merely a selective tool serving the interests of a small clique, and their legitimacy steadily erodes. As more and more people maintain, in their hearts, a distance from official narratives, outward compliance and inward alienation begin to coexist.
A society can maintain order under coercion, but it is hard for it to sustain vitality amid widespread alienation. These changes will not immediately manifest as violent conflict, but they will, at a deeper level, alter how society functions. At the same time, resistance is also changing in form. The space for overt, organized confrontation has been compressed, but everyday, decentralized resistance is spreading. Individuals' small deviations in information choice, modes of expression, and behavioral boundaries constitute a low-intensity but persistent tension.
All of this converges into a still larger paradox of authoritarian rule. The fundamental nature of the information age is flow, replication, and connection; what sustains a totalitarian structure is monopoly, closure, and a single narrative. When the two meet, conflict is almost unavoidable. Blocking can delay the manifestation of this conflict, but it cannot eliminate its root cause.
And so, the more control intensifies, the more the underlying contradictions are magnified — the higher the wall, the more people become aware of its existence; the more restrictions there are, the stronger the imagination of the outside world becomes; the harsher the suppression, the more easily the fragility of the internal narrative is exposed.
Over the long run, this path of trading openness for security tends toward self-consumption. Because it requires ever-expanding control to sustain the existing structure, and such expansion will ultimately erode efficiency, weaken adaptability, and exhaust the reserves of legitimacy.
This round of crackdown on circumventing the wall, then, is not merely an upgrade of internet governance — it is Xi Jinping's regime actively choosing a path of trading openness for control. This clampdown is both an intensification of control and, in some sense, the beginning of a deeper transformation. And it is precisely this intensification of control that continually manufactures the CCP's own opposition. Because any order premised on suppression must assume that people will stop doubting, stop questioning, stop being dissatisfied — and in the information age, these three things are precisely what is hardest to fully forbid.
The power of authoritarianism lies in its ability to suppress open dissent, but it cannot truly extinguish inner awakening; it can sever connections, but it cannot stop people from finding new ways to reconnect. As more and more people come to realize that the wall not only cuts them off from the world, but also limits their own possibilities, the very existence of the wall becomes, in itself, a continuous act of mobilization for resistance.