China, June 4th, Tiananmen Square Massacre, VPN shutdowns, arrests, digital surveillance, “996” schedule and social media censorship.

Ever since Tiananmen Square Massacre, every year on June 4, China's government ramps up VPN shutdowns, arrests, digital surveillance, and social media censorship. This year is no different—and to mark the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, the controls are even tighter.
So you must be thinking Chinese Government is a one bad entity compared to USA, don't wear your laurels tight;

One of the biggest companies in the world, Apple get danced around like a puppet.

Apple censors music and applications alike in China.

Since 2017, Apple has removed VPNs from its mainland Chinese app store. These application bans have continued and worsened over time. A censorship transparency project by GreatFire, AppleCensorship.com, allows users to look up which applications are available in the US but not in China. Apart from VPNs, the Chinese Apple app store has also censored applications from news organizations, including the New York Times, Radio Free Asia, Tibetan News, Voice of Tibet, and other Chinese-language human rights publications. They have also taken down other censorship circumvention tools like Tor and Psiphon. Apple even took out songs, that sing freedom.

Twitter is not far behind;

Chinese Activist accounts caught in Twitter sweep

On May 31st, a slew of China-related Twitter accounts were suspended, including prominent activists, human rights lawyers, journalists, and other dissidents. Activists feared this action was in preparation for further June 4th related censorship. Since then, some of the more prominent accounts have been restored, but many remain suspended. An announcement from Twitter claimed that these accounts weren’t reported by Chinese authorities, but were just caught up in a large anti-spam sweep.

Google at least has put it's Dragonfly, censored search engine for China in the back burner.

Google’s sleeping Dragonfly

Late last year, we stood in solidarity with over 70 human rights groups led by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, calling on Google to end their secret internal project to architect a censored Chinese search engine codenamed Dragonfly. Google employees wrote their own letter protesting the project, some resigning in protest, demanding transparency at the very least.

You can read more comprehensive article at EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Thank you EFF for all the hard work ensuring digital freedom

Despite Bing And Microsoft Dancing To The Chinese Tunes, Bing Gets Flicked Off And On.

On Wednesday people in China were disturbed when they could not access the Bing Search engine. After investigations involving both the sides, it was revealed that Microsoft Corp.’s search engine Bing was blocked in China was due to an accidental technical error rather than due to censorship. The search engine is once again accessible in China.

“Some reports are saying it is due to technical problems, You should ask other parties.” said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry. The government typically does not explain its actions or justifications.

The blocking of Bing was a surprise because Microsoft has sought to build a local operation under China’s rules. Alphabet Inc.’s Google, very unlike Microsoft, under some pressure from different quarters, pulled its search engine out years ago in part to avoid government censorship, Microsoft has toed the line and stops content deemed illegal from showing up in results. This may have allowed Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service remained online and available. The Great Firewall of China, blocks thousands of websites including big boys like, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Yahoo, and Google.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company wasn’t yet certain whether the Bing incident reflected a broader issue.

“It’s not the first time that we’ve encountered issues like this for being in China. These do arise periodically, We do adhere to the global network initiative set of principles when it comes to search services in China. And that does mean that there are days when there are either difficult negotiations or even disagreements, but we’re not aware of any ongoing negotiation or disagreement.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Bloomberg