China is helping Pakistan build a Great Firewall-like internet censorship system – here’s what you need to know

China seeks to replicate its infamous Great Digital Firewall by helping Pakistan build a similar system for its own means.

As per the latest Intelligence Online report, Islamabad and Beijing have been working for almost a year on this project, which is set to considerably boost censorship and surveillance levels in the country. All this comes as Pakistan has intensified its efforts to regulate the usage of the best VPN services.

The Great Digital Firewall of Pakistan

While the likes of Russia and Iran have been boosting their national internet capabilities lately, China’s Great Digital Firewall remains the most successful example of a sovereign internet infrastructure. This is exactly what Chinese companies are now helping Islamabad build – the Great Digital Firewall of Pakistan.

Such a system is expected to block most foreign websites, de facto increasing current censorship levels in the country. It’s worth reminding that Pakistanis cannot access all main social media platforms without a virtual private network at the time of writing, with X being blocked since February 2024.

While the Pakistan government said this infrastructure “would only be used to protect two strategic data exchange points on the national network,” as reported by Intelligence Online, authorities will be able to activate the firewall when needed.

Allegations about Pakistan using Chinese censorship and surveillance tech aren’t new, though. Al Jazeera reported in November last year, in fact, about some secret tests of China-like ‘firewall’ tools to monitor online traffic and regulate the use of popular apps.

Such a system “has the ability to block VPNs,” too – a Ministry of Defence official, familiar with the new deployments, told Al Jazeera at the time.

P@SHA sounds the alarm! 🚨 The hastily implemented firewall is a major setback for Pakistan’s tech sector. Businesses are struggling to survive amidst crippling internet outages and VPN woes.Read P@SHA’s official statement on the National Firewall: https://t.co/aoHrhE6CNm pic.twitter.com/JOwEhzJpYjAugust 16, 2024

Pakistan’s VPN crackdown has been a developing matter throughout 2024 and into 2025.

After trying to clamp down on VPN usage by directly disrupting the services, internet watchdog NetBlocks first reported VPN restrictions seven days after X had been blocked. PTA shared plans to regulate the use of unregistered VPNs as a way to curb misuse back in August.

The plan was eventually withdrawn at the end of the year due to a lack of legal grounds to ban VPNs, as per Pakistan’s Law Ministry. A new licensing category for VPN providers was introduced in December as the latest bid to regulate Pakistan VPN usage.

Whether that’s early to predict what’s at stake for VPN users in the country, experts have already raised some concerns about the consequences of a national firewall.

On the matter, the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) said last year: “The imposition of the firewall has triggered a perfect storm of challenges, with prolonged internet disconnections and erratic VPN performance threatening a complete meltdown of business operations.”

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TOPICS

Chiara Castro

News Editor (Tech Software)

Chiara is a multimedia journalist committed to covering stories to help promote the rights and denounce the abuses of the digital side of life – wherever cybersecurity, markets, and politics tangle up. She believes an open, uncensored, and private internet is a basic human need and wants to use her knowledge of VPNs to help readers take back control. She writes news, interviews, and analysis on data privacy, online censorship, digital rights, tech policies, and security software, with a special focus on VPNs, for TechRadar and TechRadar Pro. Got a story, tip-off, or something tech-interesting to say? Reach out to [email protected]

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