China makes internet shut-downs official with new security law

China is able to shut off internet access during major ‘social security incidents’ and has granted its Cyberspace Administration agency wider decision making powers under a draft law published this month. The draft also appears to require critical infrastructure organisations including foreign entities to store “important” data on Chinese soil without specific permission to host […]

How China’s media and risky trading fueled stock market crash

  The Shanghai Composite had just gone above 4,000 points, and investors were pouring money into the market. Brokers were opening four million new trading accounts a week to meet demand. The newspaper proclaimed the bull market was “just beginning.” The prediction proved right — for all of a few weeks. The Shanghai Composite rose […]

U.S. Cloud Providers Face Backlash From China’s Censors

  U.S. tech companies are caught in the middle of an escalating battle between China’s increasingly active Internet censors and the free-speech activists determined to thwart them. Activists outside of China say they are disguising Internet traffic banned by Beijing—which includes anything from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, to Gmail and news websites—by […]

China Further Tightens Grip on the Internet

BEIJING — Jing Yuechen, the founder of an Internet start-up here in the Chinese capital, has no interest in overthrowing the Communist Party. But these days she finds herself cursing the nation’s smothering cyberpolice as she tries — and fails — to browse photo-sharing websites like Flickr and struggles to stay in touch with the […]