even forced out of the Chinese market. Chinese Internet users have several ways to circumvent censorship. Netizens generally rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) to access blocked websites and messaging apps. However, in July 2017, the Chinese government required telecommunications carriers including China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom to block individual access to VPNs by February 1. In August 2017, more than 60 VPNs, such as Astrill and Express VPN, were removed from China's App Store. VPNs that are allowed to be used in China must be approved by state regulators and use the state network infrastructure. Instead of sensitive words which can be censored online, Chinese netizens use puns and Chinese homophones to communicate. Sex and pornography on the Internet The Chinese government has been denouncing sex and pornography culture and actively establishes "sex education" for teenagers and high school students in order to prevent them from developing an interest in this culture. the most frequent way Chinese people were accessing otherwise banned sexual material was through the Internet. According to a 2012 article, the number of sex-related pages was increasing at the time. China's Ministry of Public Security had collected intelligence agents from student groups to spy on people's internet activities. When government efforts at porn censorship and surveillance heightened in 2010, instances of erotic activism also emerged online. movies, books, comics, and videos involving sexually sensitive or provocative material were typically banned on Chinese Internet. Web administrators have been seeking sexual information online to remove it as soon as they found it or otherwise censor it. , there have been sections in China's criminal law which explicitly forbid the production, dissemination, or sale of obscene material, for which people can be imprisoned. In the 1980s, there was a campaign against "spiritual pollution", referring to sex-related content. In 2018, a Chinese erotic writer who wrote and sold a gay porn novel named Occupy online was sentenced to a ten-and-a-half year prison sentence. , conservative attitudes toward sex talk have remained standard amongst the general public. Surveillance cameras By 2018, the Chinese government had installed close to 200 million surveillance cameras across the country, which amounts to approximately one camera per seven citizens. At the same time, approximately 40 million surveillance cameras were active in the United States in 2014, which amounts to approximately one camera per eight citizens; however, these are largely installed by homeowners and stores