A Shandong man learned that the hard way when he tried to stop embarrassing photos of himself from spreading on the internet by destroying the physical internet infrastructure in his neighborhood.The man, identified only as Liu, was a newcomer to Weifang who had come looking for work. One night last summer, Liu took part in a neighborhood square dance, a popular activity usually associated with middle-aged women. However, Liu noticed that people in the crowd were laughing at him, and had taken photos of him dancing.

Liu left the dance, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that these humiliating photos would end up on the internet. So, at the end of June, Liu, who had only an elementary school education, went out one evening and destroyed four optical cable network receivers, causing over 100,000 yuan in damages.

Police caught up with him and arrested Liu on August 19.

We can’t say if Liu was successful in preventing his online humiliation, but an online search hasn’t turned up anything so far. However, we can tell you that other Chinese men have been filmed square dancing, and they don’t seem to mind as much as Liu does.

Watch Chinese men square dance here, here, and here.

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According to a report in The Beijing News, the No. 4 Linyi Mental Hospital in Shandong employs a treatment method called “low-frequency pulse therapy” to treat its patients for internet addiction. The procedure is described by patients as similar to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and is extremely painful.

Medical experts claim the treatment is “unscientific” and its director, Yang Yongxin, is an “evil” person who has “harmed countless children”.

The internet addiction center responded to the accusations in a letter published on its own website last week, claiming the accusations were nothing more than “malicious libel” and constituted a “serious violation of the truth” that had damaged the reputation of its director. The letter goes on to say that its treatment methods were legitimate, that all of its patients were willing participants, and that the center had no involvement in any illegal activities.

In 2009, China’s Ministry of Health directly forbade Yang’s internet addiction center from carrying out any further rehabilitation involving electroshock therapy. The Ministry said existing medical research had concluded that the practice was unsafe and had no scientific merit.

Yang’s internet addiction center administered aversion therapy for more than 80 reasons or conditions, ranging from eating chocolate to “challenging Yang Yongxin’s authority”.

According to Yang, the use of electroshock therapy was “mild and not dangerous” and was better thought of as “refreshment therapy” to help children relax.

In 2008, the public was outraged after a CCTV report revealed Yang’s internet addiction center had been employing the practice since it was founded in 2006.

Earlier that year, Yang was the subject of a glowing report by CRI, in which the psychiatrist was referred to as “Uncle Yang” by patients who credited him for overcoming their addiction to the internet. As of 2009, parents paid 6,000 yuan ($878) per month to have their children treated at the center.

However, even after the 2009 ban, Yang continued to treat children for internet addiction. According to first hand accounts, Yang is still using electroshock therapy.

Fu Nan (an alias) said he was treated at Yang’s internet addicition center in 2014 when he was just 14 years old. After being abducted against his will on the street, he was taken to the center where he received his first electric shock just half an hour after arriving. “It was like multitudes of needles were pinching my body. Every cell hurt,” Fu recalled.

Internet addiction is not classified as a mental illness in China. China’s National People’s Congress has estimated as much as 10 percent of the country’s under-18 users are addicted to the Internet.

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Introduced on a trial basis, 200 WiFi hotspots have been created around the palace. It is expected to be available in the Palace Museum’s exhibition halls, rest and dining areas.

Visitors can log into “PalaceMuseum-WiFi” using their WeChat accounts, or through mobile message verification.With the introduction of WiFi, the museum hopes to provide visitors with better access to its exhibitions and creative cultural products, as well as engage visitors in interactive games and treasure hunt activities.

In July, the Palace Museum announced it will partner with Tencent to create a video game for mobile phones that will introduce Chinese culture to a wider audience.

Also earlier this year, the Palace Museum opened up several sections of the Forbidden City that had been off-limits to visitors since 1925.

Despite a desire to bring The Forbidden City into the 21-Century, the 600 year-old drainage system put on a bit of show last month in its ability to handle Beijing’s torrential rains which caused flooding elsewhere in the capital.

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Revised regulations on WiFi use on commercial flights in China may allow airline passengers to use their smartphones and access the internet as soon as the end of the year.

Legislation to amend regulations that limit the use of electronic devices on board is underway, said Zhu Tao, director of the air transportation division at the Civil Aviation Administration of China in an interview. Tao said the relaxed restrictions may be implemented by the end of this year or by early 2017.

Last November, China Eastern was the first Chinese airline to begin offering in-flight WiFi service on their international flights operating out of Shanghai. China Daily also reported that WiFi services will be available on Chinese high-speed trains within three to five years.

Demand for WiFi on airlines is so high that a survey found 90 percent of respondents claim the availability of in-flight WiFi would influence which airline they fly with. Although the future looks bright with its promise of in-flight WeChat and Taobao, smartphone use aboard Chinese commercial airliners is not favorably looked upon right now.

Last week Monday, a revision to China’s Civil Aviation Law proposed fining passengers 50,000 yuan ($7,515) for using smart phones during flights. Phone use was included in a list of prohibited behaviors that pose a risk to public safety that included smoking, forcibly occupying seats, blocking channels and gates, breaking into airports and planes, assault on the flight crew, fighting, spreading rumors and causing public mischief.

The new law covers violations that aren’t punishable under China’s criminal law.

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As of June 2016, there were 710 million internet users in China, 21.3 million of which accessed the internet for the first time this year. Interestingly, 191 million internet users in China live in rural areas, accounting for almost a quarter of all users.

Nine out of ten of all of China’s internet users access the internet using their mobile phones, and apps are driving internet use. Drive sharing apps are very popular among Chinese internet users, totaling 159 million people. Apps for ordering take out food were used by 149 million mobile users.

Instant messaging apps are used by 92 percent of China’s mobile internet users. Other popular mobile apps include search programs, online payment systems and online music and video apps.

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Zhang said he was warned by WeChat that his post, criticizing beverage maker JDB Group Ltd., for defaming Qiu Shaoyun, a person hailed by the CCP as a Korean war hero that died rather than betray the location of Chinese troops. “They deleted my post and sent a long report to me, saying they had received a protest from JDB, found that my accusations were ‘untrue’ and ‘violated their rules,’ and would close my account if I wrote a similar post again,” he said.

Zhang accused Tencent of yielding to commercial pressure to “arbitrarily” block public WeChat posts.

Tencent, WeChat’s parent company, is a publicly traded company whose largest shareholder is MIH Group, a subsidiary of the South African media group, Naspers.

Zhang contends that China’s social media must not be influenced by foreign powers. “The importance of Weibo and WeChat is no less than that of an army. It concerns power in political discourse and national security. We mustn’t lose control to foreigners or separatist capitalists,” said Zhang.

Zhang’s isn’t the only pro-China voice being drowned out by foreign influences. According to Globalview, several posts, including those from the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, were removed regarding director Zhao Wei’s decision to hire a “suspected Taiwanese separatist”.

“Netizens were shocked. Capital is so powerful that they can block any kind of voice they dislike,” wrote Globalview in a commentary.

Internet controls in China are so strict that numerous accounts and websites are routinely banned and closed for infractions such as “spreading rumors”, as in the wake of last year’s Tianjin explosion. Recent crackdowns have targeted the country’s live video streaming content,

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As of August 1st, all mobile app developers in China will be compelled by law to conduct real-name registrations of their users and preserve records of their activity for at least two months. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) explained the new regulations are necessary because “Some apps have been used for spreading violence, terrorism, pornography and rumors, while some apps are violating users’ privacy and cheating money from them.”

Developers must verify the identities of their users by recording their phone numbers or other personal information. At the same time, developers must guarantee the security of their users’ personal information, and promise not to collect information on the location of their users.

Mobile app providers will be made responsible for their users, while developers must “improve censorship” by issuing warnings, suspensions and even bans to any users sharing “illicit information”.

The new regulations also make app stores responsible for ensuring all apps are authentic, while being on the look-out for piracy.

These new regulations follow this month’s announcement that all mobile app games distributed in China must be pre-approved by Chinese authorities, paying particular attention to video games with “political and military themes”.

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The regulation stipulates that domain names with access to China should be provided by domestic registration services owned and operated by Chinese institutions. In other words, if you’re a foreign service provider, you can’t offer a domain name with access to China. Any person or business caught in violation of the regulation faces fines of up to RMB 30,000 (over $4,600).

The Ministry has since clarified that the proposed rules do not involve websites that are accessed overseas. “There is no fundamental conflict between the new draft and the global domain name regulation system,” said the Ministry.

Much of the controversy revolves around article 37 of the draft, which reads in part:

For domain names engaging in network access within the borders, but which are not managed by domestic domain name registration service bodies, Internet access service providers may not provide network access services.

According to the Ministry’s “clarification”, the new Chinese Internet law will be used to block non-complying foreign websites operating in China. Or, as Fang Binxing, an expert on network information security at the Chinese Academy of Engineering explained in a recent Global Times report: “what you use in China must be registered to Chinese institutions”.

Fang believes the regulation will enhance Internet management, as a website can be blocked “when one stops its name server from providing service for it”. As such, authorities advise foreign companies in China to transfer their website domain names to Chinese registers in order to comply with the new rule.

The People’s Daily Online reported the media fuss was much ado about nothing:  “The media, especially the foreign ones, interpreted this article as an effort to completely block foreign websites from China.”

One interpretation of the draft regulation is that China wants to fully control the domain name “.cn”, typically used for high-level official government websites. As Tech in Asia writes:

Even this slightly more optimistic take would wreak havoc on any .cn domain provider not based in the mainland. For example, the world’s biggest domain supplier, GoDaddy, sells .cn domains throughout Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore, but does not actually operate in mainland China. This law could mean that those .cn domains would need to be switched over to domestic Chinese hosts – lest they be blocked by the Great Firewall, which could identify their foreign IP addresses.

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The car’s specifications won’t be released until the unveiling, but People’s Daily reports that the car is both a sports-utility vehicle and an energy-saving car equipped with a battery that will retain 80 per cent of its storage capacity after running 160,000 kilometers.

The vehicle features an operation system equipped with computers, modern sensors, information fusion, telecommunication, artificial intelligence and automatic control.

Last March, Alibaba and SAIC Motors announced they were establishing a one billion yuan ($162 million) fund in order to “lead China’s Internet car development”. Plans at the time claim the program utilizes technology such as cloud computing and big data in order to provide a better driving experience, including access to e-commerce, digital entertainment, maps and communication services.

Alibab’s smart car is not the first to feature an internet in-car networking system. In April 2014, Baidu launched a system called CarNet that featured location-based services and voice-driven navigation. A month later, Tencent launched Lubao Box, another in-car feature that offers real-time safety and maintenance information.

With Google leading the way for tech companies in the West to develop products and services in the automotive industry, Chinese tech companies have also been busy with their own collaborations. Baidu partnered up with BMW to successfully test drive a self-driving vehicle on the highways of Beijing last December.

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A number of Chinese VPN (virtual personal networks) users, particularly Astrill, have said they have been unable to circumvent Chinese internet protocols. On the other hand, users of other VPNs have reported no change to their service whatsoever.

VPN problems arose last month when Astrill, Golden Frog, and StrongVPN all said their Chinese services had been compromised in some way. Students and personal users seem to be most affected by the outages, while services to business appear to be unaffected.

As with previous service disruptions, Astrill had noted the service disruption was most severe for clients using iOS devices.

Meanwhile, the current VPN outages coincide with the annual twin sessions for the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Colloquially known as the “two sessions”, this important political event is where China’s lawmakers meet each year to propose new laws.

Like other high-profile events hosted in the capital including last fall’s WWII victory celebrations, the two sessions are accompanied by blue skies (after a smoggy start) and a clamping down of controls over China’s internet.

Popular with expats residing in China, Astrill had faced disruptions before. Severe outages struck Astrill users last fall and at the top of the year, again mostly affecting users with iOS devices.

Back in January, a former Google security engineer revealed that a number of VPN service providers may be putting their clients at risk for using outdated encryption technology, allowing Chinese authorities access to personal information.

VPNs are services that allow Internet users in China to bypass security protocols (colloquially known as the “Great Firewall of China”) and enable access to prohibited websites such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter.

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