China requires use of state monopoly for internet calls banning Skype

Image representing Skype as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase
Telegraph:

In the latest move dashing Western internet company hopes of breaking into China, it was announced that all internet phone calls were to be banned apart from those made over two state-owned networks, China Unicom and China Telecom.

"[This] is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country," reported the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist party.

Websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are already blocked in China and Google closed down its Chinese servers last year after heavy government pressure.

Yesterday, Wang Chen, the deputy head of the Chinese Propaganda department, said: "By November ... 350 million pieces of harmful information, including text, pictures and videos, had been deleted [from the Chinese internet]."

Some Chinese users of Twitter, the micro-blogging website, claimed they could already no longer download Skype, but the service appeared to be working normally in Shanghai.

...
I suspect this is about the government's ability to intercept calls on its own service but not on Skype and other outside services. The government is still very fearful of freedom and what it might bring and what people who experience it might want from their government. They are trying to go back to their totalitarian model.
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