In less time than it took Chinese netizens to strip their supermarkets of common table salt, China ended its live-and-let-live policy with regards to the most commonly used tools for evading the country’s Internet restrictions. Recent weeks have seen an unprecedented crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs), along with direct denial-of-service attacks by the government on Google itself, and infiltration efforts targeting foreign journalists.
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo is joined by Gady Epstein of Forbes and Kathleen McLaughlin from the Global Post for a discussion that might help you make sense of what is happening to your Internet. We are also joined by Jonathan Watts, Guardian journalist and author of When a Billion Chinese Jump. Freshly back from a trip to cover the ongoing disaster efforts in Japan, Jonathan helps bring perspective to our discussion of how China is reacting to Japan’s nuclear crisis.