Alibaba Cloud helps students skirt China firewall during virus shutdown

HONG KONG: China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is seizing on a new business opportunity thrown up by the novel coronavirus: helping foreign universities skirt China’s stringent internet controls to keep classes going for their mainland Chinese students.

University associations told Reuters that, soon after the virus started spreading globally, Alibaba’s cloud division met with member institutions and pitched access to a network that could be established within 48 hours and act as a bridge between universities’ portals and mainland Chinese students. This “is a good initiative to gain more spending among these organisations that will increasingly offer a blend of online and offline course content”, said analyst Matthew Ball at Canalys.

“During the challenging time of the coronavirus, cloud-based technologies play an important role to help people adopt to the new normal. Our technology offers a solution to meet an important need for students to continue with their studies,” Alibaba Cloud said.Skirting the Great Firewall through connection services such as virtual private networks is illegal in China without a licence, and only a handful of VPN providers are permitted to operate.

It also offers a VPN-like experience when students browse the web for content relevant only to their studies.

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