The Internet inside China remained a strictly censored and heavily policed space. A new law on encryption, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, requires encryption technology “relevant to national security,” a legally nebulous phrase, to be inspected before being released. Millions of Chinese relied on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to scale the state’s digital censorship system—“the Great Firewall”—to gain access to online information outside China; the punishment for using VPNs unapproved by authorities included imprisonment. Authorities selectively enforced the ban on unapproved VPNs, including targeting providers and users. The government announced a plan to develop “big data and artificial intelligence technology” to track “trouble makers” and “maintain stability.”