Scholars who study China have noticed changes in China’s Internet over the past few years. Vincent Brussee, an analyst at the Mercator China Research Center, a Berlin-based think tank, regularly scours the Chinese Internet for data, noting that reliable data is increasingly difficult to come by. Some government websites may be geo-blocked, limiting access to their content from abroad. Many Chinese platforms require a mobile phone number associated with a real-name system. Documents made public three years ago disappeared. Brussee uses a VPN with servers in China to access Chinese content for this purpose. But VPNs are unstable, slow, and sometimes stop working. Tencent’s WeChat is often used by government agencies to release public information, but using WeChat or Weibo requires a mobile phone number, making it difficult for foreigners to register. Scholars studying China have developed a habit of keeping local copies.
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