China: World’s Worst Abuser of Internet Freedom again

China is ranked as the World’s Worst Abuser of Internet Freedom for the third consecutive year, says the “Freedom on the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism” report that was issued by Freedom House, a Washington-based think tank conducting research on advocacy and democracy.

According to the report, Internet controls within China reached new extremes in 2018 with the implementation of the sweeping Cybersecurity Law and upgrades to surveillance technology. The law centralizes all internet policy within the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), strengthens obligations for network operators and social media companies to register users under their real names, requires that local and foreign companies work to “immediately stop transmission” of banned content, and compels them to ensure that all data about Chinese users is hosted within the country. The Cybersecurity Law has been followed by hundreds of new directives—an average of nearly one every two days—to fine-tune what netizens can and cannot do online. Among other steps, authorities have cracked down on the use of VPNs to circumvent the Great Firewall, leading Apple to delete hundreds of the services from its local app store.