Harbin Engineering University disciplines twenty mathematics students for using VPNs following peer informant tip-off
因同学告密举报，哈尔滨工程大学对20名使用翻墙软件的数学系学生予以纪律处分
- The School of Mathematical Sciences at Harbin Engineering University issued formal warnings against twenty undergraduate and graduate students after campus security systems logged them using VPNs to connect to foreign servers. 哈尔滨工程大学数学科学学院对20名本科生及研究生下发纪律处分正式通报，此前校内监控系统记录到他们使用VPN连接境外服务器。
- Leaked student discussions revealed the mass penalty stemmed from a peer informant who reported classmates during postgraduate recommendation season, exploiting strict zero-infraction rules to disqualify academic competitors. 泄露的学生聊天记录显示，这起集体处分源于一名学生在保研季的暗中举报，该学生利用“一票否决”的零违纪红线，将学业竞争对手踢出推免名单。
- The incident triggered widespread domestic outcry over the resurrection of informant culture in Chinese universities and the Great Firewall barriers that criminalize basic STEM research. 事件在中国国内引发广泛愤慨，舆论强烈抨击中国大学内部告密文化的死灰复燃，以及防火长城对基础理工科（STEM）学术研究的制度性阻隔与泛罪化。
The School of Mathematical Sciences at Harbin Engineering University issued disciplinary warnings against twenty students for bypassing the Great Firewall via unauthorized virtual private networks, NetEase and Sing Tao reported. The trap sprang quickly. Between September 18 and 19, campus monitoring consoles logged undergraduate and graduate accounts routing traffic through external servers. While the university described the penalties as leniency for first-time offenders who caused no political damage, leaked campus chats revealed a darker mechanism: a rival student trailing in postgraduate recommendation rankings snitched on peers to purge competitors from the admission pool.
The purge showcases the regime’s digital panopticon operating in tandem with weaponized informing. Informant culture is not new. By making clean disciplinary records and political loyalty the foremost prerequisites for postgraduate slots, campus administrators institutionalized perverse incentives where students actively hunt dormitory roommates for ideological missteps. When deep packet inspection software flags forbidden network tunnels, universities enforce administrative criminalization against youths seeking standard academic tools—treating routine foreign research inquiries like subversive security threats while cyberspace monitors scrub investigative essays examining the snitching wave.
These punitive measures extract severe human costs from Chinese youths struggling under a contracting job market. Mutual trust has vanished. When educational authorities transform classrooms into surveillance panopticons where survival requires turning against one’s peers, the party-state ensures ideological compliance by fracturing civilian solidarity from within. Ordinary students who merely sought access to international mathematics papers now carry permanent blemishes on their personal dossiers, showing how authoritarian paranoia forces young scholars to police each other before they even enter professional life.
据网易新闻与《星岛日报》报道，哈尔滨工程大学数学科学学院对20名通过未经授权的虚拟专用网络（VPN）绕过防火长城的学生下发纪律处分通报。陷阱迅速收紧。在9月18日至19日期间，校园网络监控后台记录到了本科生与研究生的账号通过境外服务器路由流量。尽管校方在通报中声称鉴于违纪学生系初犯且未造成政治危害而从轻处理，但泄露的校内聊天记录揭露了更阴暗的机制：一名在保研综合排名中落后的竞争对手暗中告密，旨在将排在前面的同学剔除出推免池。
这场清洗暴露了政权的数字全景监狱与告密武器化的合流运作。告密文化并非新鲜事物。校方管理层将档案毫无违纪记录和政治忠诚设立为保研资格的首要先决条件，从而在制度上催生了扭曲的逆向激励——学生主动在宿舍中搜寻室友的意识形态偏差与违规破绽。当深度报文检测（DPI）软件标记出违禁网络隧道时，校方针对寻求正常学术工具的年轻人施加行政违法犯罪化处置——将例行的海外文献检索视作颠覆性的安全威胁，而网信部门则同步抹杀剖析这股告密狂潮的深度调查文章。
在日渐收缩的就业市场中苦苦挣扎的中国青年，正为这种惩戒机制付出沉重的人性代价。人与人之间的互信荡然无存。当教育当局将讲台与课堂改造为全景监视的囚笼，迫使年轻人通过反噬同侪以求生存时，党国体制便通过从内部瓦解公民社会的团结来维系意识形态顺从。那些原本只是想下载国际数学论文的普通学子，如今个人档案上被刻下了永久的污点；这残酷地表明，极权主义的受害妄想症，甚至在年轻学者步入职场之前，就已迫使他们彼此猜忌、相互构陷。
The leaked circular sparked fierce backlash across Weibo, Zhihu, and WeChat, where netizens lamented the erosion of basic trust in Chinese universities. Commentators noted that STEM scholars require VPNs simply to read arXiv papers and access open-source AI tools: 'A defense university punishing mathematics majors for bypassing the firewall to download academic literature is self-sabotage.' Others expressed dread at the resurrection of Mao-era snitching: 'Students no longer see classmates as peers, but as competitors to destroy through ideological reporting.' The revelation popularized the grim campus term 'roommate enemies' (*舍敌*), describing dormitories where students covertly log each other's minor infractions—from unauthorized electric kettles to VPN usage—to gain an edge in hyper-competitive postgraduate quotas.
泄露的通报在微博、知乎和微信上引发轩然大波，网民哀叹中国高校内部最基本的同侪信任已荡然无存。评论者指出，理工科研究人员甚至仅为了阅读arXiv预印本论文和使用开源AI工具就不得不翻墙：“一所国防院校因数学系学生翻墙下载学术文献而处分学生，这简直是在学术自残。”也有人对文革式告密之风的复活深感恐惧：“现在的学生不再视同窗为伙伴，而是视为可以用意识形态举报来铲除的竞争对手。”这一事件也让校园新词“舍敌”在网络走红，用来形容宿舍内部室友之间暗中记录违规使用电热毯、翻墙等微小违规行为，以便在白热化的保研竞争中获得优势的冷酷现实。
Cyberspace Administration monitors moved aggressively to scrub analytical commentaries addressing the campus snitching culture. WeChat censors deleted prominent viral essays from public accounts *Youyou Luxing* (*呦呦鹿鸣*) and *News Bro* (*新闻哥*), both of which dissected how university admissions incentivize backstabbing over merit. Discussions on Zhihu linking the penalties to the Party's broader ideological control over academic life were removed, while China Digital Times archived multiple 404ed dispatches. State media accounts covering the incident disabled unverified comments and instructed aggregators to reframe the story strictly around 'national security awareness' and student compliance with digital sovereignty statutes.
中国国家网信办迅速行动，强力封杀剖析高校告密生态的深度评论文章。微信平台删除了微信公众号“呦呦鹿鸣”与“新闻哥”撰写的多篇高阅读量爆款文章，两文深入剖析了大学保研机制如何激励背刺告密而非凭借真才实学。知乎上将此类处罚与党对学术生活的总体意识形态管控挂钩的讨论均遭屏蔽，“中国数字时代”归档了多篇遭404删除的文章。官方媒体在报道此事时关闭了未经审核的评论区，并指示新闻聚合平台将话题严格框定在“国家安全意识教育”与学生遵守数字网络主权法规的通稿方向上。
Harbin Engineering University is one of China's elite 'Seven Sons of National Defense' (*国防七子*), institutions deeply embedded in military research, naval architecture, and defense technology that face strict US export sanctions. Chinese universities have long maintained campus informant networks (*教学信息员*), but the practice has metastasized under slowing economic growth and record youth unemployment. With corporate recruitment freezing, competition for postgraduate recommendation (*保研*) has become vicious. Because admissions guidelines mandate impeccable 'political attitude and moral character' and automatically disqualify candidates with any disciplinary record, students routinely exploit state surveillance mechanisms to eliminate peers.
哈尔滨工程大学是中国顶尖的“国防七子”之一，深度参与军事科研、船舶工程和国防技术，面临美国的严格出口管制制裁。中国高校长期设有“教学信息员”等校园告密机制，但在经济增长放缓与青年失业率创下历史新高的背景下，这种制度恶性扩散。随着企业招聘冻结，高校推免保研竞争趋于惨烈。由于保研政策严苛要求“政治思想和道德品质”毫无瑕疵，并将任何受处分记录直接列为一票否决项，学生遂频繁利用国家的监控机制来干掉同门对手。