The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August. The notice said Ma had used “unauthorised channels” to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company. The police confiscated the 1.058m yuan (£120,651) Ma had earned as a software developer between September 2019 and November 2022, describing it as “illegal income”, as well as fining him 200 yuan (£23). Ma said on Weibo that the police had first approached him a year ago, believing him to be the owner of a Twitter account they were investigating. “I stated that I was currently working for an overseas company, and my personal Twitter only occasionally liked and retweeted the company’s tweets,” Ma wrote.

Source: The Guardian October 10, 2023 08:54 UTC