China — the biggest internet market globally with more than 1 billion users — is no stranger to online censorship. For years, authorities in the country have built out a series of techno-policy restraints, commonly referred to as The Great Firewall, to restrict open access to the internet. But those restrictions have also given rise to a creative industry: circumvention tools used by tens of millions of people to get around the wall and use the internet like others do elsewhere.

Yet recently, some of the most popular of these tools have mysteriously started to disappear.

Earlier this month, client software Clash for Windows, a popular proxy tool that helps users bypass firewalls and circumvent China’s censorship system, suddenly stopped appearing on GitHub: the repository had been the main route for users to download it and the developer to update it.

After deleting the repository, the developer of Clash for Windows, who goes by the pseudonym @Fndroid, posted on X that they would stop updating the tool, with no further detail. “Stopped updating, see you soon