As Beijing tightens grip on VPNs, internet users in China adapt

Internet users in China are finding it harder to use VPNs to get around China's "Great Firewall" as authorities crack down. (ABC News: Jarrod Fankhauser)

Lin recently returned to China after getting her master's degree in Australia and is again using virtual private networks (VPNs) to climb over the "Great Firewall", Beijing's censorship apparatus.

She first used a VPN as a high school student to "stay on top of celebrity news and events" on Instagram.

When Lin returned home last year, she found that the VPN she relied on a decade ago was still up and running, but unstable.

"It's hard to articulate how often the disturbance occurs," said Lin, who asked to use a pseudonym for safety reasons.

VPNs are becoming more difficult to access in China. (Reuters: Florence Lo )

Lin said the VPN app she used was able to route her connection through different countries. Whenever one route was not working, she switched to a different one to restart the app.

"They have routes like Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore. I don't know exactly what they mean. I just switch when it's not working," she said.

An estimated one million people took part in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. (AFP: Catherine Henriette)

Billy, a Hong Kong resident who also asked to use a pseudonym, regularly travels to mainland China and for two years used a VPN called LetsVPN.

Billy told the ABC that he found LetsVPN, which is popular with expats in China, after a few other VPNs did not work.

In April, LetsVPN issued a statement saying it "made a difficult decision" to "suspend services in China's mainland area" due to "the impact of continuous internet blockage".

In May, the company resumed "standard operations" but said it could not guarantee service availability in China.

Billy said he had decided to switch VPNs to a new one that still worked.

"It's becoming more difficult finding stable VPNs," he said.

Hundreds of pages of secret documents leaked to the ABC provide a rare glimpse into how human censors and AI erase references to Beijing's violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989.

US-based censorship analyst Eric Liu said there was a new round of crackdowns on VPNs in April.

Mr Liu said telecom carriers in parts of China were asked to comb through their networks and block all VPN services.

At the same time, some netizens in China posted on social media that the VPN services they used were down.

Mr Liu said that often when people experienced difficulties using VPN services it was because the government had just installed new censorship technology.

He said it could also