China is choking the Internet

I've been in China for just under a year, and in that time have found ever larger portions of the free internet cut off. At first it wasn't too hard to get around, using Google's cache, some web proxies and then Tor.

But the state is cracking down, cutting off more of these avenues. Google cache is now blocked, deep packet inspection is analysing traffic that comes from web based proxies and blocking anything... that's normally blocked. And finally Tor is being effectively tackled.

It's public list of access points to the Tor network is blocked, and now Tor bridges are being blocked hours and minutes after them being made available. Tor is being defeated.

Top this off with an ever growing list of useful websites and services being cut off; half of anything Google does, Dropbox, and now Zoho.com's services.

Just as I begin a small web development company based in China, we get our first customer in the U.S. and are about to start using Zoho to manage the project only to find that it's blocked (it was working yesterday dammit!).

What kind of damage is this doing to China's startups? I mean I can't be the only one that this is affecting?

I'm on a shoes-string budget and even if I had the cash I don't have a credit card that can make payments in $US to buy VPN access.

Sorry for the rant but first Dropbox and now this, it's getting ridiculous. Any ideas on dealing with this?

Well, since you've been in China less than a year and you're finding out that it hampers your ability to run a business, why not state loud & clear to the government they'll be losing your business and move out?

It's not like you don't have options, as opposed to the majority of the Chinese population, for who moving out is not an option.

Perhaps I'm overly paranoid, but I think moving out first, then getting all uppity with gov't is probably a saner route.

Actually I came here because my wife missed home, and the business isn't official(that is, isn't registered which because I'm not Chinese takes a lot of time and money and could very well be flat out rejected, have a read of some posts at China Law Blog http://www.chinalawblog.com/ , they cover the details).

Basically this is something I've just gone ahead and started, will work my ass off to make work, and if it does, and is worth while then I'll go official.