It is commonly known that the online world in China is heavily censored by the government. There are many different topics that are forbidden to talk about online. People who break these rules will have their comments removed. In some cases, entire websites have been taken down in an effort to silence Chinese citizens who have views that are opposed to the government. People are also subject to arrest depending on the comments they make online. However, blockchain is now providing a way for Chinese people to circumvent the government censorship and post banned content anonymously.
There have been a couple of incidents recently that are both receiving a lot of attention. The first involves a female Chinese student who committed suicide after she was sexually harassed by one of her college professors. Peking University had tried very hard to cover up the incident. A letter was written by another student about the incident. It went into great detail about what happened. Many of the biggest social network platforms in China blocked the letter when it was posted. However, the same letter was then posted anonymously on a blockchain called Ethereum. This made it impossible for the Chinese government to have it removed.
There was a second incident involving infants in China being given vaccines that were inferior. There was a story that was written which exposed what was going on. The Chinese government wanted the story to be suppressed because it was critical of a very large biotech company. However, blockchain was used once again to get the story out to the public without it being removed by any government censors. Needless to say, the Chinese government is not very excited about the way that blockchain is currently being used to get around their various laws and regulations.
The future of blockchain use in China is unclear. The government is already going to implement laws which will require people in China to use their real names or identification numbers if they want to gain access to a blockchain. This will obviously make it easier for the police to track down people who are posting content that is objectionable to the government. Will people find new ways to use blockchain to get around the laws that have just been put into place? Only time will tell. However, it appears that the Chinese government is going to be watching blockchain companies like never before.
