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Sina and Tencent, which own Weibo and WeChat respectively, did not respond to requests for comment.

While Liu's case is an outlier in terms of the intense efforts to wipe out all mention of the deceased activist, it is in keeping with trends in Chinese online censorship that have been building since Xi assumed power in 2012.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

This month saw new bricks added to the wall, as Beijing went after two means of bypassing its controls.

That would be an extreme step, as VPNs are also used by many companies to enable secure networking and file sharing between offices.

Previously Beijing has tolerated commercial services offered to foreigners to allow them to access banned sites like Facebook and Twitter while they're in China --international hotels in major Chinese cities have also been known to offer this service.

Lokman Tsui, an expert on censorship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said it was "possible that some of the newer developments we have seen are experimental in nature, e.g. let's try and float this to see how well it works ... and see what public reaction we get."

Even if the VPN ban does not pan out, Tsui said, the direction things are going in is clear, and it's not positive.

It was one startlingly at odds with the free and open network expounded by the internet's inventors. In Xi's view, sovereignty, not freedom or communication or sharing, was the most important factor in online policy.

"Cyberspace is not a domain beyond the rule of law," Xi said. "Greater efforts should be made to strengthen ethical standards and promote civilized behavior."

Instead of the world wide web as we know it, countries would each maintain their own national internet, by force if necessary, with the border controls and immigration standards they see fit.

Peter Micek, general counsel for Access Now, which lobbies in favor of an open internet, said Chinese officials and technicians are increasingly working to water down protections for online freedoms at the United Nations and other bodies which oversee internet standards and governance.

"More and more Chinese engineers and engineers from Chinese companies are proposing and developing and adopting standards," he added.

Technical bodies like the International Telecommunication Union, the World Wide Web Consortium and others have huge influence on how the global internet operates, but sometimes with little transparency and limited democratic input.

"That's one place where quietly there is a more concerted effort (by China) to take control of what the internet actually is," Micek said.

China's efforts to influence global internet policy are largely designed to legitimize -- and prevent other countries from complaining about -- Beijing's existing controls on expression online, but they could have far-reaching consequences.

"A lot of governments would like to follow China's lead, and exercise if not complete control then effective control over the boundaries of what people can say and do online," Micek said.

Nor is the situation likely to improve anytime soon in China, said CUHK's Tsui.

"Other governments have definitely gotten worse at pushing back at Chinese censorship," he said, pointing to a push by the UK, US and others to water down encryption protections in the name of fighting terrorism.

"This allows China to say 'what we are doing is not so different'," he said. "Overall the trend is towards more censorship .. so the bar is getting lower, meaning it is easier for China to go even lower."

Back in China, controls are expected to ramp up even further as the country nears the all-important Communist Party Congress, the once every five years handover of power, at which the next Politburo Standing Committee, which runs the country, will be chosen. Some have suggested there may be a corresponding relaxation following the meeting, but experts CNN spoke to were skeptical.

Charlie Smith, co-founder of censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, said it was a mistake "to tie any crackdown on internet freedom in China to specific events or characters."

"Things started trending in the wrong direction when Xi Jinping took power," he said. "Regardless of what meetings are on the horizon, the authorities have been instructed to entirely control what people say, read, watch and hear on the internet."

Tsui said new trends like the WhatsApp block and crackdown on VPNs will either continue "or they are filing this knowledge away for future reference, to try again at some later date."

"The (Party Congress) is not the cure for the situation, it's not even a pain killer" Badiucao said. "I see no hope or willingness for the CCP to make a positive change."

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China internet censorship: WhatsApp crackdown only scratches the ... - CNN

Censorship is demeaning.

When the New York Times finds a professor of psychology to tell us that hold on to your seats words can actually hurt, and therefore certain speakers should be prohibited from campuses, it is arguing that the vulnerable students need protection from authorities on high.

When the U.K.s Advertising Standards Authority proposes to ban harmful traditional gender roles from all advertisements, it makes clear that it doesnt believe women can handle a depiction of a mother cleaning up after her family. Even if women are not bothered, they must be protected: They may not recognize harm because certain negative stereotypes are so normalised.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, the aforementioned professor of psychology, demeans us with science. On Sunday, she wrote, If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech at least certain types of speech can be a form of violence. This allowed her to conclude that its reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school and that we should halt any speech that bullies and torments.

Barretts conclusion does not follow from her premises. As Jesse Singal notes in New York, the studies that Barrett cites are mostly about chronic stress, attributable to prolonged and sustained emotional neglect or verbal abuse during childhood. They has nothing to do with attending a college at which a loathsome person happens to be giving a speech that can be protested or simply ignored. Yiannopoulos, stupid as he is, is not going to physically damage your brain by speaking on your campus.

Barrett surely knows this, which is why she adds that Yiannopoulos is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. Therein lies her sleight-of-hand: On the one hand, he can be banned because his words are literally violent, but on the other, it is acknowledged that his words dont actually cause physical harm, but only contribute to the larger campaign of abuse that can be claimed, without any evidence, to have equivalent effects to sustained verbal abuse during childhood.

Barrett poses as a faithful interpreter of scientific evidence, determined to protect students from the words endangering their telomeres. But in reality, her argument would pave the path to the criminalization of unpopular speech. Violence is dangerous, after all, and it merits state violence to subdue and prevent it. By her logic, any controversial speaker could be grouped with a campaign of some sort and thus made into a contributor to something akin to physical violence in its effects.

Consider what the results would be of treating this argument seriously. Take Linda Sarsour. Among her other activities, she delights in claiming that Zionists have no place in the feminist movement. So whats stopping me from saying that, while not physically harmful in themselves, Sarsours bullying statements join a larger campaign of abuse against Jews, and therefore deeming her speech responsible for causing chronic stress? Should she on these grounds be prohibitedfrom criticizing Zionism?

In Britain, you can be arrested for speech, even if its only an offensive Facebook post. This is all for the safety of the public, of course. On Tuesday, Britains Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) published a new report, pushing Britain further into the free-speech abyss. The report presented an evidence-based case for stronger regulation of ads that feature stereotypical gender roles or characteristics which might be harmful to people.

The report will form the basis of new standards to be created for 2018 by the ASAs sister organization, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). Together, the ASA and CAP self-regulate the advertising industry, a power they have been granted by the British government. Advertisers cannot opt out of their advertising codes unless theyd like to face sanctions as severe as criminal prosecution, imprisonment, and confiscation of financial assets.

This means that, for example, ads that depict men as stereotypically inept at performing housework or women cleaning up after a mess they did not make themselves will be prohibited. Ella Smillie, the lead author of the ASA report, says she hopes to ensure that modern society is better represented. I would have no problem with that, but it is not what Smillie has recommended. She has sought to forbid the representation of anything but modern society, whatever that means. So just like that, Britain will essentially make it illegal to depict my father and mother in advertisements.

To depict a man struggling with an old vacuum cleaner while a woman succeeds with a newer product would supposedly restrict the choices, aspirations, and opportunities of children, young people and adults. But again, this has nothing to do with expanding womens range of choices. Rather, the new proposals aim to promote one choice and forbid the representation of another.

The ASA claims its report is backed by a major independent research study by GfK, the German market research firm. But if you care to read the report in full, you will find its evidence laughably sparse. Free speech and liberty to offend does not correspond with a right to cause harm, its authors assert, unaware of how broad a claim they have just made. On this logic, one could call for the banning of a million books and the suppression of a thousand columnists for causing harm.

But the report continues, As the evidence links the depiction and reinforcement of stereotypes to unequal outcomes and real-word harms for men and women, it could be argued that the right to offend does not apply. But just a few lines earlier, the authors state that the literature is not conclusive on the role advertising plays in constructing or reinforcing gender stereotypes. In any event, these harms are suspect, relying on value judgments about men and women that the British people never authorized their advertising regulators to make. And the report uncritically presents very controversial claims about them, including about so-called stereotype threat. This is the contested idea that people will perform more poorly when they feel at risk of conforming to a stereotype.

Of course the media can encourage conformity, and of course the British regulators pose as advocates of choice and liberation from conventions. They cast themselves as protectors of women everywhere, vulnerable to have their ambitions crushed by ads for home appliances. However, this is just a pose. In reality, the regulators only offer a different, more modern conformity, casting traditional practices as not only unjust, but bad for your health.

In suppressing free speech, the paternalistic censors in Britain and at the Times cannot claim to be on the side of freedom or the little guy. Long past destroying the old orthodoxies, they seek to create new ones. While claiming to watch out for your interests, they pursue social engineering.

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

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Censorship: It's Always for Your Own Good - National Review

With the threat of a single gateway still looming over the heads of netizens, the recent dust-up over limiting access to Facebook content deemed inappropriate by the government, a future internet chock-full of stringent government controls still seems an inevitable reality.

While the government has asserted in the past that its motivation for any restrictions to the kingdoms internet access is cybersecurity, it would also seem that term covers blocking content it feels is not in its best interest which was recently the case when it requested the Thai Internet Service Provider Association, or TISPA, to engage Facebook in an attempt to get specific content blocked.

To be clear, its common practice for companies such as Facebook and Google to block content from specific countries such as Thailand if presented with a valid court order. From a social media platform perspective, its better to stay in business in a country by blocking some content than to be blocked altogether as has happened in China or North Korea.

What is not common practice though is for companies to take down content all together. That means, even when blocked, it remains accessible to people outside of the blocked country.

The issues related to a single gateway span far beyond the goal of preventing cybercrime or far more draconian attempts to limit access to information it can have a direct impact on the economy.

Given the economic policies being spearheaded under the Thailand 4.0 initiative and growth of tech startups in the past decade, shifting to a single gateway or regularly blocking social media content could undermine much of the intended progress.

With Thailand focused on moving toward a digital economy with the Thailand 4.0 initiative, its going to have to balance its concerns over digital content it deems illegal with the impact on platforms that many firms will leverage to do business.

Sure, finding ways to block content and take legal action against social media platforms might give the government more control over what it deems inappropriate or just doesnt want to see but also threatens to slow down content delivery to local users, making their experience less enjoyable. And if you are trying to grow a digital economy, creating an unpleasant online experience as the norm is not a positive feature.

User experience is a vital part of any digital business, and at a time when the digital economy is being pushed to the forefront of economic policies, it seems shortsighted to enact mechanisms that will ultimately hamper the proliferation of businesses that travel down this path.

If economic growth in all digital sectors is a target for Thailand, then policies such as content blocking and the single gateway will surely hinder not help that effort.

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Net Censorship Undermines Opportunities of 'Thailand 4.0' - Khaosod English

Unlike most Western media platforms, including its parent company Facebook (FB, Tech30), the popular encrypted messaging app had managed to escape the attention of Chinese officials. Now it's firmly on their radar.

Multiple WhatsApp users contacted by CNNMoney reported they were unable to send images or videos on Tuesday. Cyber experts said they had seen further disruption on WhatsApp servers in China on Wednesday.

The servers were not completely blocked but are "largely unavailable," said Charlie Smith of GreatFire.org, a group that monitors internet censorship in the country.

"I have also conducted speed tests from China and these sites are not reachable," he told CNNMoney.

Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Paris-based startup Symbolic Software, said his team logged into the app via a Chinese server on Tuesday and were unable to send anything other than basic text messages.

"We realized that the servers that Whatsapp uses to exchange videos, photos and files were being blocked in the same way they would block Facebook, the BBC etc." Kobeissi said.

A WhatsApp spokesperson declined to comment when reached by CNNMoney. The Chinese government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has tightened internet censorship across the board in the run-up to the Communist Party's 19th Congress this fall, where a major senior leadership reshuffle is expected. A new cybersecurity law that took effect in June is expected to make it harder for foreign firms to operate in China.

"The combination of the new cybersecurity law, and the upcoming Party congress, in addition to restrictions on unregistered VPNs, all point to this being a concerted government effort to crack down on freedom of expression," said Peter Micek, general counsel at digital rights organization Access Now and a teacher of internet policy and governance at Columbia University.

A wave of politically sensitive news appears to have prompted an increase in Chinese censorship in recent weeks.

Related: Even in death, the Chinese government still censors activist Liu Xiaobo

In the wake of the death of Liu Xiaobo -- a prominent Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist -- last week, censors blocked people from posting the image of an empty chair to pay tribute. The Nobel committee put Liu's medal on an empty chair in the 2010 award ceremony because he was still in prison.

CNN's broadcast was blacked out in China every time Liu's images or story appeared.

Smith, of GreatFire, believes the WhatsApp crackdown is primarily linked to the activist's death.

"Censors are working overtime, trying to eliminate all information about him. They must have determined that Chinese were using WhatsApp to share pictures and videos of him and decided to crackdown," he said.

Last week, images of Winnie the Pooh were also reportedly censored on Chinese social media because internet users were comparing the cartoon bear to President Xi Jinping.

Related: Chinese internet censors crack down on ... Winnie the Pooh

On Weibo (WB), China's equivalent of Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), no results appear on searches for "Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping."

Related: Google's man-versus-machine showdown blocked in China

China has 731 million internet users, and 95% of them access the web on mobile devices, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center.

Western media and tech companies have been trying to crack the market for decades but have largely failed.

Facebook (FB, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Instagram, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Snapchat (SNAP) and YouTube are among the Western services blocked in China.

The crackdown has given domestic companies such as Baidu (BIDU, Tech30), Youku, Sina (SINA) and Tencent (TCEHY) a huge advantage.

Experts say WhatsApp's appearance in the government's crosshairs may also be aimed at helping a local competitor -- Tencent's WeChat. Unlike WhatsApp, WeChat is unencrypted and thus far easier to monitor.

"The point of these attacks is to coerce the Chinese audience into using more open systems such as WeChat," Kobeissi said.

This week's disruption suggests the risk of a full-fledged ban is rising.

"A complete block is just a natural progression," said Smith. "Then gradually people will shift to WeChat."

-- Steven Jiang contributed to this article.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published July 20, 2017: 12:01 AM ET

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WhatsApp is being targeted by China's censors, experts say - CNNMoney

China's top cyber authority ordered the country's top tech firms to carry out "immediate cleaning and rectification" of their platforms to remove content deemed offensive to the Communist Party and the country's national image, it said on Wednesday.

The watchdog held a meeting with representatives from firms including Tencent Holdings ( tcehy ) , Baidu ( bidu ) and Sohu.com , on Tuesday where it gave them a list of specific errors, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement on social media.

The violations include distorting Chinese history, spreading fake news, misinterpreting policy directives and failing to block content that subverts public stability.

"[The sites] must adhere to the correct political line and moral norms," the statement said.

Chinese authorities have recently cracked down on platforms that allow users to share media from outlets that are not sanctioned under state-issued licenses, amid a wider censorship campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.

On June 1 the CAC ushered in new regulations requiring all offline and online media outlets to be managed by Party-approved editorial staff. Workers in the approved outlets must receive training from local propaganda bureaus.

Related: Chinas WeChat Is a Censorship Juggernaut

In the wake of the new regulations several sites have been targeted with fines and closures under the watchdog's orders.

In specific examples, the CAC criticized one platform that failed to censor articles that "seriously deviated from socialist values" by saying China benefited from U.S. assistance during conflicts with Japan during World War II.

Other examples included a story detailing alleged affairs by party officials, an opinion piece that decried China's death penalty and an article that urged readers to invest in speculative real estate projects.

The CAC said the firms were required to immediately close offending accounts and strengthen "imperfect" auditing systems to avoid future punishment.

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China's Top Cyber Watchdog Is Making More Demands on Tech Firms - Fortune