Beijing has often made headlines for restricting the flow of information online, but this time is fundamentally different, experts said.
Historically, authorities have tightened controls over the domestic internet in the lead up to the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress. Even though the event drew to a close on Tuesday, regulators are unlikely to now roll back many of the tighter regulations, analysts said.
There are two kinds of restrictions used by the authorities.
First are the publicly announced moves introduced by regulatory bodies, explained Rogier Creemers, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands. So-called special measures are the other kind of restriction. They are aimed at creating a stable online environment during a major event like the Party Congress, Creemers explained.
Companies themselves may seek to clamp down on their users ahead of such important national occasions, said Charlie Smith, the co-founder of China censorship monitor GreatFire.org, who operates under a pseudonym. Such private sector measures include preventing certain videos from being shown or not letting users alter their profile pictures.
“These are moves being made to make sure that your users do not do anything stupid during the Congress,” Smith said. “These restrictions will be lifted as soon as the meeting is over.”
But Smith said the crackdown on circumvention tools like VPNs were likely to stay and the “current state of difficulty” that the Chinese encounter when trying to access the free internet is going to be the “new normal.”
Creemers concurred, telling CNBC that broader regulations were “likely here to stay.”
Eurasia Group’s Triolo added that Xi’s vision of cyber-sovereignty means that “China should be able to control and monitor all internet traffic that traverses China’s internet infrastructure.”
On top of all the external controls, Beijing is also considering taking a stake in some of China’s largest internet companies, according to the Wall Street Journal. Planting a flag in those firms would likely give the Chinese government a more absolute role in corporate decision-making.
