China's VPN Market Now Open To Foreign Investment (bleepingcomputer.com) 35
The central government of China in Beijing has announced a decision to allow foreign entities to invest in the ownership of VPN (virtual private network) services in the country. From a report: Under this new policy, foreign investors can only own up to 50% of China-based VPN companies. This allows China to retain state control over local and approved products while still offering a significant incentive for investment. Apart from VPNs, the policy update also includes changes in the investment caps on information services for app stores, internet connection services, and more. This comes as somewhat of a surprise for a country that has been fighting foreign VPNs for years now, hindering their presence in China and imposing fines and other penalties to users who ignored the banning orders.
Pay money to route your traffic through a CCP VPN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard pass
Re: (Score:2)
The people this is aimed at don't give a shit about human rights or state control or any of that because they like money and this might be a way for them to make more of it.
Capitalism has no scruples.
State Control (Score:3)
and VPN.
What could possibly go wrong here?
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Where some VPNs are more private than others.
The other comments have it covered (Score:1)
Why use a Chinese VPN? Non controlling "investments" were always welcome in China, no?
Useless.. (Score:2)
There are only three applications of these 'VPN services':
-Appearing to originate from a more favorable country to trigger a different collection from streaming providers (due to licensing restrictions that forbid it legally otherwise, which would run counter to CCP declarations that they respect IP, which is a bit more explicit than not bothering to enforce IP)
-Bypassing censorship either by your government or ISP (Which CCP would be very much against)
-Obfuscating your traffic from your government or local
Re: Useless.. (Score:2)
It's a class system. Which is funny considering China claims to be communist. It knows a significant minority of Chinese want to use western websites like Twitter and Facebook while deeming the ban of these a public good. This creates a market to access those sites but it also wants to control that market, so it does. This leads to a class system.
These people aren't looking at YouTube to see anti-China rhetoric or to spread it but cat videos and etc. So by and large, it makes sense relative to "educated cla
Re: (Score:2)
The municipal government of Beijing has won the green light from China’s cabinet to allow up to 50 per cent of foreign ownership in virtual private network (VPN) services, widely used by multinational corporations operating in the country to skirt the Great Firewall and connect to overseas servers.
While the Chinese government permits companies to seek special approvals to use VPNs to access foreign websites blocked in China, such as Google, Facebook and most major international news platforms, authorities have also been stepping up efforts to clamp down on providers offering VPN services without permission.
Oh look, there's a 4th.
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That's pretty much a mix of the first two listed applications, just the Chinese government saying "It's ok if you are a big multinational company, but not if you are a mere citizen".
What an investment. (Score:2)
It's a TRAP (Score:2)
If countries like Taiwan or South Korea want some charity expenditures...
Or maybe the U.N. wants to chip in some?
This isn't what you think it is (Score:2)
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It seems an odd thing to be a 'vpn company' for that application. One would think that's too specific to get much of a business out of it. It's generally just a feature of whatever network equipment/software that companies use to route anyway.
You know China is not safe for business, (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
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And, like most such multi-billion dollar companies, your future is almost certainly being sacrificed for the bonuses of today's management. China will copy whatever you do, probably even better, and then sell it back to your customers in just a few years time. This happened with physical products, it happened with hardware, then it happened with telecoms. Now it's happening with electric cars and IT. It's funny how the normal "US based" two year time horizon makes different decisions seem clever than the
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The people who run the huge corporation I work for don't give a single fuck about me, so why should I care about them?
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You might be right, but I've decided not to bother caring about it.
The people who run the huge corporation I work for don't give a single fuck about me, so why should I care about them?
You probably shouldn't care about them at all. You probably shouldn't even care much about many of the people who own it, though with most corporations much of the ownership is in pension schemes for normal people and then you should care. However the ownership and control of the ideas that make your corporation make money probably matter for more than those people. In the ideal case, you'd probably want to find a way to get your entire senior management locked away for the rest of their lives for the cri
Outsourced Tracking? (Score:2)
Is this just the Chinese government trying to get some outside money to help them set up their online tracking? My understanding of what VPN means in China is a direct conduit to usage for government tracking purposes. So they're trying to get foreign investors to toss some money onto the problem to help them out. From their perspective I'm sure in makes perfect sense. From our perspective, they're out of their ever loving minds.
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From their perspective I'm sure in makes perfect sense. From my perspective, they're out of their ever loving minds.
There, fixed that for you. There are plenty of suckers who will go in with the hope of a quick buck.
so I have some extra $ set aside... (Score:2)
decisions, decisions...
Chinese VPN investment opportunity, bitcoin or Theranos stock?
phukkit, if I'm going to waste it, might as well waste it on me: hookers, blow and a lottery tickets are my high-risk investments of choice
Inbound Gateway (Score:1)
Does it make sense to assume that in the future one will use a Chinese VPN service in order to have external access the Chinese alternate/walled-garden internet?
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that a VPN will be required to access resources outside of the "walled-garden", which should be more properly called a prison camp. They'll know who is accessing what, and will likely use some sort of MITM so they can inspect all the content for approved ideology.
Chinese business 'laws' (Score:2)
significant incentive for investment
A minority share in a company that can be made worthless at the whim of the government (or various officials therein), or be stolen right from under you at the whim etc...
All for a product that requires little physical labor so a Chinese VPN won't be cheaper than one from any number of countries that are less hostile to foreign investment. Gee, where do I sign up?
Oxymoronic? (Score:1)
I trust China to... (Score:2)
... shut it down if it becomes the slightest bit successful. Can't have people outside the party getting influential.
So kind (Score:2)
Communists want your money! (Score:2)
What a deal!
Re (Score:1)