China and others’ plans for using the international mechanisms of the United Nations to clamp down on a free and open Internet may have been foiled (…for now), but of course that isn’t stopping the communist regime from furthering their strict monitors over their people’s Internet access at home.

China appears to be tightening its control of internet services that are able to burrow secretly through what is known as the “Great Firewall”, which prevents citizens there from reading some overseas content.

Both companies and individuals are being hit by the new technology deployed by the Chinese government to control what people read inside the country.

A number of companies providing “virtual private network” (VPN) services to users in China say the new system is able to “learn, discover and block” the encrypted communications methods used by a number of different VPN systems. …

Astrill, a VPN provider for users inside and outside China, has emailed its users to warn them that the “Great Firewall” system is blocking at least four of the common protocols used by VPNs, which means that they don’t function. “This GFW update makes a lot of harm to business in China,” the email says.

China is all too aware of the difficulty of maintaining their painstaking efforts to limit their people’s knowledge of the possibilities beyond communism — it’s the reason why the state-run media and education systems are chock-full of propaganda and that the Chinese aren’t allowed access to Western news sources and social media sites — and the reason why the regime is beefing up their efforts to perpetuate the jingoistic charade.

Their biggest problem is that stepping it up a notch on the big-brothering in this growing age of digital information and global business is only going to get them so far for so long, and their bid to use the UN to restrict international Internet access last week is a testament to how precariously the plutocracy’s survival so deeply depends upon continual checks on the freedom of speech and information.