While Indian newspapers and TV channels continue to pick up reports about the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from Chinese Communist propaganda sites, the Indian newspapers and websites cannot be accessed in Beijing now without Virtual Private Network (VPN) server.
China has even blocked the Virtual Private Networks, thereby preventing Indian websites from being accessed. (Representative Photo)
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According to diplomatic sources in Beijing, the Indian TV channels can be accessed through IP TV as of now. However, ExpressVPN had not been working in the Communist state for the past two days on iPhone as well as desktops.
VPNs are powerful tools which allow users to overcome blocking of censorship and visit a particular website. But China has created such a technologically advanced firewall that it blocks even the VPNs.
China is infamous for its repressive online censorship and the Xi Jinping government has refined it into an art with high-tech interventions. For example, anytime the word Hong Kong protest is mentioned on either CNN or BBC, the screens in Beijing go blank and news only returns after the topic is over.
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The blocking of Indian websites is the latest amid the ongoing tension between India and China after the Ladakh stand-off on June 15. The latest development coincides with the Indian government’s move to ban 59 applications, most of them Chinese.
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The blocking of Indian websites is the latest amid the ongoing tension between India and China after the Ladakh stand-off on June 15. The latest development coincides with the Indian government’s move to ban 59 applications, most of them Chinese.
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The popular apps which have been banned include TikTok, UC Browser, SHAREiT and WeChat. The government has cited concerns that these applications are “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”.
The move comes after weeks of discussions within the government that began before the border dispute with China flared up earlier this month, but was expedited in the aftermath of the deadly June 15 confrontation in Galwan Valley, officials aware of the discussions told HT on the condition of anonymity.
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Officials cited above said Union home minister Amit Shah extended his support to the move to block the applications, and signed off on a recommendation by Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla on Saturday before the order was formally issued by the IT ministry as per protocol.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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