Inclusion of “overcoming the wall” in political security: Chinese higher education institutions are turning the Internet border into a disciplinary border for students

Since September, many Chinese higher education institutions have been exposed by students and are concentrating on overcoming the wall. The Security Service of the Nanjing Engineering College, in its first class of “Newborn security education”, directly included “overwall” in the title “Political security” and wrote “the movement `overwall' itself is illegal”; The “Network Info-Receive” screenshot from a Gensen university accurately records the length of time students use off-site platforms such as X, Instagram, Telegram, Facebook and requests that it be processed in class. This is not just a general campus network management, but rather a further embedding of the CCP national network blockade into the tertiary discipline system.

From Cybersecurity Education to Political Security Education

The 10 September materials of Nanjing Engineering College for safety education for new entrants show that the school security system directly incorporates “rolling over walls” into “political security”, requiring students to “do not wear or use any “rolling over walls” tools” and to direct students to “regular channels” such as school libraries. The Network also announced that a series of national cyber-security awareness weeks would be held from 14 to 20 September and that the education would be extended to December.

On the surface, this is “network security” education; The actual content translates access to the offshore Internet itself into political risk. School security education has become information border education when schools are not targeted at fraud, malicious software or account leaks, but rather are politicized about whether or not students are accessing the global Internet.

Surveillance is not just a tool for identifying, but also for how long it took to record what students visit.

On 10 September, a Genseu netizens exposed an internal feedback screenshot from a university called the “Network Info-Improvement Office”. In the screenshot, students are recorded in class, name and time, and the specific time of using external social platforms such as X, Instagram, Telegram, Facebook, etc., is accurate to the second. Other screenshots show that the relevant information is aggregated and then referred to the class or mentor for “processing”.

This means that the governance of the university network has moved further from “discovering abnormal flows” to the closed circle of personal identity

• specific platform
• time for use
• administrative processing. The students ' access to the offshore Internet is no longer a technical journal but is translated into personal disciplinary files that can be accessed by counsellors, security offices and even the public security system.

More notably, students who claim to have no school network are still on the school “roll-over” list and are asked to indicate what software is used and where to download it. The counsellors even warned that the situation was likely to be “scrutinized in police stations”. This suggests that the in-school identification mechanism may not rely solely on campus network exports, but rather on broader data synergies and identity matching.

The university is becoming the end of the firewall at the grass-roots level

China's “Flaming Wall” was used to be understood as a national-level Internet blockade: websites were blocked, keywords filtered and cross-border acceptance restricted. But the round of campus renovations shows that the technical blockade is being further sunk into organizational discipline.

Some universities not only publish “common wall-turner” lists, but also include Clash, Shadowrocket, V2Ray, ProtonVPN and multiplayer accelerators. The early childhood teacher training college in Chinzhou had previously been criticized for having linked students to the offshore website through Quaker, UU accelerator and Steam.

When the Higher School Protection Service, the Information Office on the Net, the Counsellor and the Public Security System are working in synergy, the National Firewall is no longer a technical wall but a system of education, monitoring and discipline for individuals.

The real limit is the ability of students to access external information independently

The CCP has long placed offshore websites, offshore social platforms and unauthorized cross-border network access within the security risk framework. The university is one of the most sensitive areas of this governance logic: university students have a strong need for access to information, language learning and public expression, while being within the school administration system, with a real identity, a real online name, a real name for dormitories and a high degree of overlap.

As a result, higher education is the most easily controlled mass space. Students may have access to historical, political and social information that is different from official narratives once they have free access to Google, YouTube, X, Telegram, Wikipedia or academic resources outside the country. For a regime that integrates ideological stability into national security, this free access to information is itself considered a governance risk.

That is why the “flowing wall” has escalated from a technical act to a “political security” issue. The goal is not simply to protect the campus network, but to keep the student ' s sources of information within the limits of power.

The CCP ' s information boundary is institutionalized from campus to overseas

Beyond the Wall is not just about whether students in China can access a website, but how this governance model forms part of the ideological expansion of the Communist Party. Beijing has long demanded that foreign Chinese enterprises, overseas student organizations and diasporas comply with their political red line; In the interior, the same red line is written into the day-to-day management of students through the security and cyber-enabled systems.

This creates a complete chain of ideological responsibility: Central Networks and the National Security System (SNS) set a cross-border information boundary — local education and Internet systems promote school implementation — the Higher School Protection Service (HES) and the Information Service (IS) identify — and the student management system completes individual discipline.

(b) Students ' access to the global Internet, which is one of the most basic knowledge requirements of modern university education; Under the CCP system of governance, it is being redefined as a political act requiring monitoring and punishment.

When the university writes “Backing the Wall” into the first class of the new generation and uses the social platform abroad for a precise period of time, it is not just a cyber-security consciousness, but a political submission: What information can be seen, which platforms cannot be touched, and which borders cannot be crossed, is left to the party security system to determine for students.