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While China has long wielded the most sophisticated and comprehensive internet controls in the world, under President Xi Jinping it has upped the ante, squelching most major foreign social networks and messaging apps one at a time.
Earlier this autumn, the Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp was hit by blockages in China, becoming the latest in a long line of products to be rendered unusable by Chinese government filters. Others include Gmail, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Telegram and Line.
Beijing appears to have disabled these apps because they generally feature encryption options that make messages harder for the government to monitor. Such products also often run afoul of government rules that require the use of real-name identification for each and every account.
A Microsoft spokesman said that Skype had been “temporarily removed” from Apple’s store and that the company was “working to reinstate the app as soon as possible.” But the spokesman did not address Skype’s absence from a variety of major third-party Android app stores. Because Google’s services are largely blocked in China, Android users revert to alternate stores for downloads, and Skype’s main app was not available on popular ones run by Chinese tech giants like Huawei and Xiaomi.
The move is a reminder of how beholden Apple has become to the Chinese government at a moment when the leadership is pushing to tighten its control over the internet. To stay in China’s good graces, Apple has taken down apps from its Chinese app store in the past. Last year, it said it had complied with a request from the Chinese authorities to remove apps created by The New York Times from its China app store.
In recent months, a perfect storm of sensitive political meetings and a new cybersecurity law has led to a sharp crackdown on internet freedoms in China. Foreign TV shows were taken down, software that helps evade China’s internet filters was targeted with heavy disruptions, and in some cases, companies restricted the amount of time that children could spend playing video games.
But a key Chinese Communist Party meeting had already ended when Skype disappeared from the app stores — an indication that the cybersecurity law was the reason, and that the law, which began to take effect in June, is likely to have a deep and long-lasting impact on how the internet works in China. While the rules do not specifically ban foreign messaging apps, they do include general language that could be used to justify crackdowns.
“A broad reading of provisions in the law could be taken to mean that there is no longer support for allowing unfettered access to foreign communications tools such as Skype, WhatsApp, Signal and others that are outside the direct control of Chinese authorities,” said Paul Triolo, the head of global technology at Eurasia Group, a consultancy.
“Hence these also come under pressure, and are increasingly being throttled or blocked,” he said.
Apple faced heavy criticism this year after it said it had decided to take down software from its app store in China that helps circumvent the government’s internet filters, colloquially called the Great Firewall.
In that case, as in this one, it said that the apps violated Chinese rules and that it had taken them down to comply. Apple said this year that it planned to open a data center in China, also in response to China’s new internet laws, which require that such centers be within the country’s borders.
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Microsoft Corp.’s Skype has vanished from Apple Inc. and Android smartphone app stores in China, becoming the latest victim in Beijing’s sweeping internet clampdown.
The internet phone and video service was no longer available on Apple’s iOS or on popular local Android stores such as Xiaomi Corp.’s, though it still functioned as of Wednesday. The Ministry of Public Security notified Apple that a number of voice-over-internet-protocol apps didn’t comply with local law and the U.S. company subsequently removed them, a spokeswoman for the iPhone maker said. Those apps, which enable voice calls among other things, remain in place elsewhere.
It’s unclear why Skype, which has operated for years in China despite making little headway against more popular services like WeChat, was targeted. Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party has tightened controls over online content and taken aim at messaging services in particular, requiring users to register their real names and threatening action against people who disseminate content deemed to threaten social stability. WhatsApp is periodically blocked in China, while the social network of its owner Facebook Inc. isn’t accessible. Twitter and Google are similarly barred.
Microsoft said in a statement that Skype’s removal was temporary and it was working to get it reinstated as soon as possible, without elaborating. The Cyberspace Administration of China and Ministry for Industry and Information Technology didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment on the move, which the New York Times first reported.
“Any instant messaging apps operating in China must follow the cybersecurity law, there’s no question about it,” said Zuo Xiaodong, vice-president of the China Information Security Research Institute, a government think-tank. “It goes without saying whose regulations need to be followed if a company’s own rules contradict China’s law —as long as it wants to continue to operate in the Chinese mainland.”
Read also: Microsoft overhauls Skype to compete with Snapchat and iMessage
While Skype’s removal triggered a flurry of online complaints, it’s unlikely to inconvenience the vast majority of Chinese online users who’ve taken up more popular chat and calling services such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat. As of Wednesday, rival messaging services from Signal to Telegram remained available for download.
China is in the throes of the biggest crackdown on freedom of expression and media in the internet era. Foreign companies complain of restrictions that hamstring operations and favor homegrown players. Police are shutting businesses and arresting civilians on message groups as Beijing plugs more holes in its “Great Firewall” blockade of blacklisted sites.
Xi has galvanized a nationwide machine in which corporations, cybercops and automated systems police content to preserve the party’s seven-decade rule. As global giants from Alphabet Inc.’s Google to Facebook Inc. explore entry, they have to weigh the benefits of tapping the world’s biggest internet market against the fallout from appearing to back a repressive regime.
Apple itself has come under fire, as critics accuse the world’s largest company of aiding and abetting censorship.
One of the key measures Beijing’s taken is a crackdown on virtual private networks, services that skirt censorship restrictions by routing web traffic abroad. Apple has removed 674 of such apps from its Chinese app store at the request of the local government, the iPhone maker revealed in a letter sent Tuesday to Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Leahy responded by calling for Apple to push back against Chinese “suppression of free expression.”
“We are convinced that continued engagement is the surest way to effect change,” Cynthia Hogan, Apple’s head of lobbying in the U.S., wrote in the letter. “We express our opinions about the impacts of laws and regulations forthrightly to policymakers.”
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