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China Cuts Off Some VPNs
jaa101 writes The Register (UK) and the Global Times (China) report that foreign VPN services are unavailable in China. A quote sourced to "one of the founders of an overseas website which monitors the Internet in China" claimed 'The Great Firewall is blocking the VPN on the protocol level. It means that the firewall does not need to identify each VPN provider and block its IP addresses. Rather, it can spot VPN traffic during transit and block it.' An upgrade of the Great Firewall of China is blamed and China appears to be backing the need for the move to maintain cyberspace sovereignty.
Help me understand your point of view. We run liberal democracies here in EU. We do block some things based on cultural expectations, and in some cases, because certain foreign power that shall not be named forces us to do so typically through government corruption on high level as shown in leaks by certain man who now resides in Russia.
But on the principle, we still consider freedom of speech to be of paramount importance, and unblocked internet access to be an important cornerstone of this principle. As you point out we do make some deviations from the principle, but these deviations tend to be based on rather awful historic facts and are very much targeted.
Chinese model is about denying large portions of free speech, such as political non-threatening free speech of political dissidents to improve social cohesion of their society. How is it hypocritical to criticize this aspect of Chinese society from European point of view? We very clearly differ here, and there is no hypocrisy at play. Our blocking is targeted, specific and based on history. It specifically makes a point to avoid suppressing political dissent when at all possible. Chinese is pre-emptive, overly broad and its main intent is suppression of political and social dissent.
I fail to see hypocrisy. Please point out the mistake in my logic and explain how exactly this critique is hypocritical.