Two of the first things that strike visitors to China are irritants to which some residents have become inured: bad air and poor internet service. For those with money to spare, a (very expensive) solution to the first problem is to buy air purifiers. For the second the solution is much cheaper and, until recently, far more visibly effective: a "virtual private network" (vpn), a software service that tunnels through the government's extensive obstacles to content it dislikes. Selling air purifiers remains a growth industry in China, but the vpn business is in trouble. For years internet censors largely tolerated it, perhaps because users of paid vpn services were, at first, mostly foreign residents. In recent weeks, however, the government has changed tack. It has been making unusually strenuous efforts to block access to vpns. Foreign companies which provide them have been warning customers that these problems will persist as China's countermeasures become ever more sophisticated.
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