A Chinese entrepreneur has been sentenced to 5 and half years in prison for selling virtual private network service, a government newspaper said, as Beijing tries to stamp out use of technology that evades its internet filters.

Wu Xiangyang also was fined 500,000 yuan (USD 76,000) by the court in the southern region of Guangxi for operating his business without required licenses from 2013 until this June, according to the Procuratorate Daily. It said he was convicted of collecting "illegal revenue" of 792,638 yuan (USD 120,500).