Why is GitHub banned in Mainland China?

GitHub is the most popular open-source website in the world. Microsoft acquired GitHub for 7.5 billion in 2018. Since it’s one of the MSFT assets and my blog mainly focuses on MSFT-related stories, I’d like to discuss it in this post.

GitHub is widely used and almost every developers in the world use GitHub. It’s a business card of a developer accepted by companies.

However, developers out of China may not understand how it could be without GitHub. In this story, I’ll tell you how Chinese developers use GitHub and why some of them don’t use GitHub at all.

Why was GitHub banned?

I searched a few posts to understand the reasons. I summarize as below

• In March 2013, GitHub was completely blocked due to hosting anti-censorship tools.
• In January 2019, GitHub pages were partially blocked due to the 996.ICU repo.
• GitHub hosts code, documents, and discussions that may include politically sensitive material
• Since GitHub is a global platform and hard to censor selectively, Chinese authorities choose to block access.
• In Chinese cyber law, any accessible website in China must have a registration number from CNNIC. However, GitHub never applied this number. In other words, it’s an illegal website in China.
• GitHub often hosts open-source VPNs, proxy tools, and firewall circumvention software (e.g., Shadowsocks…