China to block gambling sites

Local telecoms were ordered by the Chinese government to start a crackdown on VPN.

China.- The government of China has ordered telecoms carriers to start blocking access to virtual private networks (VPN) by February 1. The Asian country has been fighting illegal gambling for quite some time now.

Beijing authorities asked state-run telecoms firms, such as China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, to impose a restriction of VPNs, which allows people from accessing foreign gambling sites and not be identified. This means that the crackdown will prohibit locals from accessing sites outside China, and will cover a series of loopholes that were still in place, as Bloomberg reported. Whilst the push is mainly directed at illegal gambling operators, multinationals are uncertain of whether this will affect their business or not.

Jake Parker, VP of the US-China Business Council, said that this seems to impact individuals. “VPNs are incredibly important for companies trying to access global services outside of China. In the past, any effort to cut off internal corporate VPNs has been enough to make a company think about closing or reducing operations in China. It’s that big a deal,” he added.

Back in April, Chinese Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun has asked international help to fight illegal gambling, and claimed that people that encourages Chinese tourists to gamble in other countries would be severely punished by the government. The request surged after a failed extradition treaty between the country and Australia over 14 Crown Resorts employees detained last year under the claims that they were committing gambling crimes.