作者：中国民主党英国总部党员 程敏
时间：2026年4月18日
几个月前我在一次逛知乎时，曾经看到一个关于VPN工具的讨论贴，评论区里一众反贼和粉红就“墙的合法性”这个问题展开了激烈而又小心翼翼的辩论，唯恐惊动了审核导致封号，其实在国内的社交平台上，对于这种荒谬又敏感的问题我一般都是敬而远之的，最多拐着弯地阴阳怪气几句，倒不光是觉得讨论这个问题很弱智，也不是因为担心辩论不过粉红，而是被知乎封了四次号以后，“操作性条件反射”已然深入我心，就像巴甫洛夫的狗一样，一眼扫去就知道哪些话题是安全的可以畅谈无阻，哪些话题是提都不要提的。直到我看到一条评论“翻墙浏览不是最基础的互联网知识吗，如果现在还有人想浏览互联网但不会翻墙，那只能说明他无能”，我大为震惊，手指不由自主地留下了一条回复“会钻狗洞不应该是你优越感的来源，大门就在那里，你应该思考的是为什么你非得钻狗洞，而不是嘲讽别人钻不过去”，一分钟后，我的第五个知乎账号再次喜提七天封禁，而这已经是我和知乎审核员斗智斗勇多年后积累了大量的经验后仍然获得的待遇 。
想起这个事的主要原因是最近国内又出了一件大新闻，在国外的反贼圈里引起了轩然大波，根据多方信息来源，中共开始着手对互联网翻墙工具——也就是我们俗称的VPN全力剿灭，来自国内互联网运营商和工信部的多个文件，例如《陕西电信关于全面封禁海外流量及严禁翻墙业务的紧急通知》，《关于配合运营商全省网络安全专项治理工作的告知函》，以及即将在北京举行的所谓“网络强国”的研讨会，均显示中共将要在近期开展“VPN大清洗”行动，彻底封死国内普通人了解真实世界的最后一扇窗户，所以无数反贼们痛心疾首，哀叹中国将要彻底退回到朝鲜的状态，而中共的洗脑将会更无懈可击。
其实我倒觉得完全没必要大惊小怪，因为从一开始，这种事的发生就是个早晚问题，而不是会不会发生的问题。首先应该明确一点——中共制定的一切政策和手段，其核心目的永远不变，即维护自身统治的合法性和执政地位，从所谓的解放军，也就是中国特色党卫军纪律的第一条“听党指挥”，到小学教室里硕大红字贴着的“爱党爱国”，再到中国人从小耳濡目染早已形成条件反射的——各种强调“没有共产党就没有新中国”的红色歌曲和电影，，无不在表明这一点，虽然中共曾经在生死存亡之际选择了“改革开放”，与世界接轨，但这也不过是中共为了给自己“续命”不得不做的妥协，古人云“饱暖思淫欲”，经济发展起来，放开了对思想的限制，那么人的想法就会活络起来，而当经济发展和中共的统治地位产生冲突，当个人利益和宏大叙事对立起，中共会选择哪边，这不是一目了然的吗？ 因此，这次“VPN大清洗”不是皇上的心血来潮，而是我党统治下迟早会来的必然动作。习近平和毛泽东是类似的，他是坏但不是蠢，他很清楚：当经济增长这剂“统治合法性的续命药”日渐失效，当年轻人躺平、内卷、润学成为主流叙事，当房地产、地方债务、青年失业这些定时炸弹一颗接一颗作响，他们唯一能做的，就是把“墙”建的更高更牢靠。因为他们知道，一旦普通人能轻易看到外面真实的世界，宏大叙事就容易崩盘。毕竟老百姓学了英语，中共就无法将unacceptable翻译为“可以接受的”来随意糊弄普通人了。而在未来的中国，真正有能力翻墙的人，早就已经用脚投票润出去了；留下来的人里，会翻墙的越来越少，要么就是再怎么翻墙也忠心不改的铁杆粉红，不会翻墙的又被洗得越来越彻底。而这正是中共理想中的最终国家状态——一个信息完全可控、思想高度统一的“数字朝鲜”。
我并不喜欢唱衰中国，但现实摆在这里：只要中共还在一天，“维护统治地位”这一需求就凌驾于一切之上，所谓民生问题，领土问题，外交问题，这些全都是服务于这一最高需求的“边角料”。而VPN被封同样也是出于维护这一需求。只有当这个“党的利益凌驾于一切”的毒瘤制度被根本改变，只有当权力真正被关进笼子里，我们才有可能拥有一个大门敞开的互联网，而不是永远只能钻狗洞、并且还要被一起钻的粉红嘲笑钻得不够飘逸。所以，不必为了VPN被封而痛心疾首，必然的结果，有什么好惊讶的呢，用老话来说——这才到哪啊？好日子还在后头呢！
How I View the CCP’s Recent Full-Scale Crackdown on VPNs and Circumvention Tools
Author: Cheng Min, Party Member of the China Democracy Party UK Headquarters
Date: 18 April 2026
A few months ago, while browsing Zhihu, I came across a discussion thread about VPN tools. In the comments section, a group of anti-CCP users and “little pinks” were engaged in a fierce yet extremely cautious debate over the “legitimacy of the Great Firewall”, each terrified of drawing the attention of the censors and getting banned.
To be honest, on domestic social media platforms, I usually keep my distance from absurd and sensitive questions like this. At most, I might make a few sarcastic remarks by implication. That is not just because I think discussing such issues is idiotic, nor because I am worried about losing an argument with the “little pinks”. It is because, after having my Zhihu account banned four times, an “operational conditioned reflex” has already been deeply ingrained in me. Like Pavlov’s dog, I can glance at a topic and immediately know which ones are safe to discuss freely and which ones should not even be touched.
But then I saw one comment which said: “Isn’t using circumvention tools the most basic internet skill? If someone still wants to browse the internet today but doesn’t know how to get around the firewall, that only proves they’re incompetent.” I was genuinely shocked. My fingers almost moved on their own as I typed a reply: “Knowing how to crawl through a dog hole should not be a source of pride. The main gate is right there. What you should be asking is why you have to crawl through a dog hole in the first place, not mocking others for not being able to crawl through it.” One minute later, my fifth Zhihu account was awarded another seven-day ban. And that was after years of battling wits with Zhihu’s censors, with all the experience I had accumulated, and this was still the outcome.
The reason I am reminded of this now is that recently another major story has emerged inside China, causing a huge stir in dissident circles abroad. According to multiple sources of information, the CCP has begun preparing for a full-scale eradication of internet circumvention tools – what we commonly call VPNs. Several documents reportedly circulated by Chinese internet operators and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, such as “Shaanxi Telecom Emergency Notice on Fully Blocking Overseas Traffic and Strictly Prohibiting Circumvention Services”, “Notice on Cooperating with Province-Wide Cybersecurity Special Governance Work by Telecom Operators”, as well as the upcoming so-called “Cyber Power” seminar in Beijing, all suggest that the CCP is about to launch a “great purge of VPNs” in the near future, with the aim of sealing shut the last remaining window through which ordinary people in China can glimpse the real world.
So countless dissidents are grief-stricken, lamenting that China is about to regress completely into a North Korea-like state, and that the CCP’s brainwashing will become even more airtight.
Personally, however, I think there is no need to make such a fuss. Because from the very beginning, this was never a question of whether it would happen, only of when it would happen.
One point needs to be made absolutely clear: every policy and every method adopted by the CCP has one unchanging core objective – to preserve the legitimacy of its own rule and its hold on power. From the very first article of the so-called People’s Liberation Army – in other words, the Party’s own armed guard with Chinese characteristics – namely “obey the Party’s command”, to the giant red characters pasted inside primary school classrooms proclaiming “Love the Party, love the country”, to the countless red songs and films drummed into Chinese people from childhood, all endlessly repeating “Without the Communist Party, there would be no New China”, everything points to the same thing.
Although, at a moment of life and death, the CCP once chose “reform and opening up” and integration with the outside world, that too was nothing more than a compromise forced upon it in order to prolong its own life. As the old saying goes, “once people are well-fed and warmly clothed, they begin to think beyond survival”. If the economy develops and restrictions on thought are loosened, people’s minds naturally become more active. And when economic development comes into conflict with the CCP’s grip on power, when personal interests clash with the grand narrative, which side do you think the CCP will choose? Is that not obvious at a glance?
So this “great VPN purge” is not some sudden whim of the emperor. Under Party rule, it was always an inevitable move, sooner or later. Xi Jinping is similar to Mao Zedong in this respect: he is evil, but not stupid. He understands very clearly that when economic growth – that life-extending medicine which once sustained the legitimacy of Party rule – begins to lose its effect, when young people “lie flat”, when “involution” and “emigration studies” become mainstream narratives, when ticking bombs such as the property market, local debt and youth unemployment start going off one after another, the only thing the Party can do is build the wall higher and stronger. Because they know that once ordinary people can easily see the real outside world, the grand narrative becomes much easier to collapse.
After all, once ordinary people learn English, the CCP can no longer casually fool them by translating “unacceptable” as “acceptable”. In the China of the future, those who truly have the ability to get around the firewall will already have voted with their feet and left the country. Among those who remain, fewer and fewer will know how to climb the wall; or, even if they do, they will still remain die-hard “little pinks” loyal to the Party. Those who cannot climb the wall at all will be more and more thoroughly brainwashed. And that is precisely the Party’s ideal final state – a “digital North Korea” in which information is completely controllable and thought is highly unified.
I do not enjoy talking China down, but the reality is right there: so long as the CCP remains in power, the need to “maintain its ruling position” will always stand above everything else. So-called issues of people’s livelihood, territorial disputes and foreign affairs are all merely secondary matters serving this supreme priority. The blocking of VPNs is exactly the same – it too serves the preservation of that supreme interest.
Only when this poisonous system, in which “the Party’s interests stand above everything”, is fundamentally changed, and only when power is truly locked inside a cage, will we have any chance of a genuinely open internet with the gates wide open, instead of forever crawling through dog holes – and being mocked by the “little pinks” crawling through the same holes for not doing it gracefully enough.
So there is no need to be grief-stricken over the blocking of VPNs. It is an inevitable result. What is there to be surprised about? To put it in an old Chinese phrase: we have not even got to the worst of it yet. The “good days” are still to come.
