On March 8th, a man in Hubei province was fined 200 yuan by the police for using a Huawei smartphone to browse the social media platforms TikTok and X (former Twitter) at home.
The administrative penalty decision issued by the Liangzihu District Branch of Ezhou Public Security Bureau on March 11th showed that the man surnamed Xu was found using the Huawei smartphone without permission at around 5 p.m. on March 8th. He used the “Clash” software to access the international network and browse the overseas apps TikTok and X, leading to a warning and a fine.
The police stated that Xu’s actions constituted unauthorized access to the international network. According to China’s Provisional Regulations on the Administration of International Networking of Computer Information Networks, he was given a warning and fined 200 yuan as administrative penalty.
TikTok is a short video platform owned by ByteDance targeting markets outside of China, and like “X” and other Western social media platforms, it cannot be accessed normally within China.
The case of Xu being fined is not an isolated incident. There have been numerous cases in China where individuals have been fined for bypassing the national firewall to access foreign websites.
On August 22, 2025, a man surnamed Wang in Wuhan was found browsing foreign websites using a VPN on his phone and was cautioned by the police but was not fined.
On May 19, 2020, the official Weibo account of the Hanbin Branch of the Ankang Public Security Bureau in Shaanxi Province reported that on May 17, they found someone using a VPN to access foreign websites and immediately summoned the user Yang. In September 2019, Yang downloaded two VPN apps on his phone and used them to connect to the international network. As a result, Yang was fined 500 yuan and received an “administrative warning.”
On November 6, 2020, the owner of a breakfast shop in Rui’an City, Zhejiang Province, was fined 5000 yuan and had their internet cut off for playing foreign programs through a VPN.
A more notable case occurred in September 2023, when an engineer named Ma in Chengde, Hebei Province, was fined 200 yuan for working remotely for an overseas company using a VPN. The local police also confiscated his earnings from the past three years totaling 1,058,000 yuan, making it one of the highest administrative penalties for bypassing the national firewall in recent years.