from Hacker News

Chinese Netizen Fined over 1M Yuan for Using VPN

by hker on 10/6/23, 4:51 AM with 150 comments

• by lziest on 10/6/23, 5:26 AM

  The fine is actually 200 yuan, but the salary, over 1 million yuan, which he received while working remotely has been deemed as "illegal income" and subject to confiscation.

• by bjornsing on 10/6/23, 6:43 AM

  Where I live (Sweden) it’s legal to use GitHub (with or without a VPN). But if I fail to report 138000 USD in earnings I’d still be in for a world of hurt: First the tax authority would take about 100000-200000 USD from me. Then I’d be prosecuted for tax fraud. Nobody would be upset or come to my defense.

  Not saying I prefer the Chinese system, but it’s interesting that in this specific case it’s probably more lenient.

  EDIT: But I guess this guy didn’t have the option to report the income and pay his taxes? In that case it’s definitely another dimension of repression…

• by hker on 10/6/23, 5:43 AM

  Some context which may be relevant: many local governments in China are in heavy debt, and they need more income: police have been collecting more and more fines, causing some outrages [1]. There are reports that many civil servants are unpaid for months (in Tianjin [2] and other cities [3][4]), in addition to getting heavy wage cuts [3][5].

  A penalty of over 1 million yuan (>145K USD) for using VPN is a new development: before this, only VPN service sellers were prosecuted.

  [1]: Law-enforcement agencies have been imposing larger and more frequent fines for offenses: https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-local-governments-are... "China’s Police Are the New Earners for Cash-Strapped Governments"

  [2]: https://eightify.app/summary/chess/tianjin-government-crisis... "The Tianjin government's financial crisis, with unpaid wages and high debt ratios, reflects a larger problem in China's declining land finance and unsaleable real estate market, raising concerns about the stability of other Chinese cities."

  [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=242pUa9rXgg "Civil Servants go unpaid and Local Government Borrowed From Temples/Protests surge in China"

  [4]: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wages-09082023112323.... "Chinese local governments struggle to pay civil servants' wages"

  [5]: The government is trimming a combination of bonuses, cash subsidies and base pay for many employees, according to interviews with 10 local civil servants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-12/pay-cuts-... "Bankers’ 40% Pay Cuts Show the China Dream Fading in Its Richest Cities"

• by csomar on 10/6/23, 5:39 AM

  It's important to keep into perspective that China is a 1.4Bn people's country and highly decentralized (much to the chagrin of the pro-US). This happened under the "Chengde" administration. There might be many reasons for this: Chengde is over-zealous, The police has a particular issue with a particular individual, the central state wants some examples, the local state wants to show its toughness on VPN, the local state needs some tax money and is pillaging, etc..

• by throwaway4good on 10/6/23, 5:55 AM

  I don't actually understand the Chinese rules on uncensored internet access.

  When I travel to China with a mobile phone subscription that supports roaming, I get completely uncensored access to the internet. Surely this is according to Chinese rules.

  Likewise all the expats and Chinese I have met all used whatever they wanted of US social media plus they had a shit ton of pirated(?) American TV shows and movies.

  Perhap the policies are changing? I don't know but this particular case sounds like a very modest fine (200 yuan) for using a VPN and sizeable fine for not reporting (and being taxed on) a foreign income.

• by skilled on 10/6/23, 5:19 AM

  $138,000 USD

  Also an Archive link because the site timed out for me,

  http://web.archive.org/web/20231006045251/https://here.news/...

• by Simulacra on 10/6/23, 10:29 AM

  China is not a country anyone should be doing business with, let alone visiting. The level of human rights abuses and the potential for extra judicial actions make it far too dangerous.

• by hknmtt on 10/6/23, 7:17 AM

  I will never understand China or Chinese people.

• by _hypx_ on 10/6/23, 5:23 AM

  There's no possibility of China having a competitive tech industry with these kinds of restrictions.

• by rado on 10/6/23, 5:35 AM

  Yet various government agencies sidestep the GFW and use banned social media. Bizarre

• by mherrmann on 10/6/23, 6:36 AM

  1M Yuan is roughly 137,000 USD.