Cracking down on VPNs would see Western countries head down slippery slope of internet censorship 

analysis

China has built the world’s most sophisticated system of digital surveillance and censorship in an effort to control what internet users say and do online.

Late last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping helmed a Politburo session dedicated to “strengthening the governance of the internet” and cracking down on “internet chaos,” a euphemism for misinformation, discord and dissent online.

Since the genesis of the internet, China has sought to control what people do and say online, building up the world’s most sophisticated system of digital surveillance and censorship, the Great Firewall . For decades, Beijing was an outlier in its approach to the internet — Bill Clinton famously dismissed online censorship as akin to “nailing Jell-O to a wall” — but this is no longer the case.