“Cyber sovereignty” has been a buzzword among China’s political elite for more than 18 months. Now the world is finding out what it means in practice. Apple, the US tech company, was forced at the weekend to remove from its China App Store popular applications that enable users to bypass the “Great Firewall of China”.
Such applications, called virtual private networks, or VPNs, are routinely used by multinational companies, foreign individuals and many Chinese to access overseas web addresses such as Gmail, Google, Facebook, Twitter and a host of others that are blocked or painfully slow to access.
The VPNs sold in Apple’s China App Store are by no means the only ones currently available. But the move by Apple reveals Beijing’s resolve to implement published regulations by shutting down unlicensed VPNs across the country. A cyber security law introduced in June reinforces the legal basis behind such moves.