Alibaba Cloud helps Chinese students, foreign schools scale Great Firewall

China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is seizing on a new business opportunity thrown up by the novel coronavirus : helping foreign universities skirt China’s stringent internet controls to keep classes going for their mainland Chinese students. Many Chinese students returned home after the virus prompted campuses to shut and have difficulty watching live-streamed tutorials or accessing class materials due to the so-called Great Firewall. That not only blocks websites the government deems sensitive – such as Alphabet Inc’s Google – but can also slow loading speeds of accessible overseas-based sites. University associations told Reuters that, soon after the virus started…