Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China

Tools helping China’s netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run-up to the country’s quinquennial party congress that will see a top leadership reshuffle. Greater censorship is not at all uncommon during countries’ politically sensitive periods, but the stress facing censorship circumvention tools in China appears to be on a whole new level.

“Starting from October 3, 2022 (Beijing Time), more than 100 users reported that at least one of their TLS-based censorship circumvention servers had been blocked,” writes GFW Report,...