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Gmail blocked in China

reuters.com

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Re: Gmail blocked in China

#101

Post by interdrift »

dengnan wrote: post #31
WhitneyLand wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Speaking to locals they don't care Locals don't care that they can't use certain American sites, or don't care that they are intellectually oppressed?

We do care. The problem is: What can we do? Using technical method to get through GFW? Well, it works now but technically, Chinese government controls all Internet facility and they do not even care to block thousands of IPs, even if it means block the whole Internet (It happened in Xinjiang and Tibet.) Moreover, ISPs constantly throttle the international data which means connecting to a server outside GFW may be ver…

Ummm...fight for your rights?

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#102

Post by runewell »

I have only been to HK and Macau but never to the China mainland. Pardon my ignorance, but why does the Chinese government bother to censor the Internet? Are the people in China not happy with the progress that has occurred over the past few decades? Is the government really that concerned with their populace discussing politics or sensitive issues openly? Do Chinese provinces consider themselves to be separate and distinct or is it more like US states where the differences are superficial and the division is unimportant?

It seems to me the US doesn't have much leverage regarding this particular issue. We would be best served working harder towards more affordable and flexible manufacturing automation so we can be more self-reliant.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#103

Post by dghughes »

dragontamer wrote: post #96
edwinyzh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The people have chosen an autocratic government" - saying so is so unfair to us. Maybe people like me who desire for an unblocked Internet is a minority (when compared to the population in this country), but people who desire for safe milk and food, clean water and fresh air for their babies are not! But on the other hand, I must say that your observations described in your first paragraph are correct. Take the rece…

We in the US complain about our lack of choice in the political system. We have two parties, making our choices rather limited in elections. However, China has a one party system. There is no counter to the Communist Party.

If you only vote Republican or only vote Democrat in a sense you've limited yourself to a one-party system.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#104

Post by marcosdumay »

paulrosenzweig wrote: post #73
est wrote: post #29

No no no this is bad journalism. Is not just blocking "access" to gmail, but one out of of five Gmail's MX servers are blocked gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com (74.125.31.26, blocked) alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com to be specific, all traffic to address of 74.125.31.0/24, including gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com, got null routed af…

Are Gmail's MX records necessary for Chinese email users to receive email from Gmail? If so, why?

No, but they are required for sending email to Gmail. And an email provider may misscharacterize a message as spam because it's lacking.

Saying that they "Blocked Gmail" has an intuitive meaning that they blocked the HTTP interface to it, but they also blocked a part of the SMTP interface.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#105

Post by silviogutierrez »

djvu9 wrote: post #94
manlio wrote: post #88

Slightly OT, but I'm going to travel through China in a couple days and before reading this thread I thought I could get away with my VPN (hosted on my Digital Ocean VPS) plus eventually Tor, but now I'm not quite sure anymore. Could anybody shed light on this?

VPN is roughly ok as long as your IP address is not in the blacklist. But it could be unstable. The GFW may drop your connections from time to time. I am not sure about Tor but I believe it probably doesn't work any more. Private VPN/shadowsocks is now the majority I think.

Out of curiosity: what does shadowsocks do that regular SSH tunneling doesn't do?

Why is an entire program needed just to run a simple ssh command? I couldn't find any info on the matter.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#106

Post by joyofdata »

dghughes wrote: post #103
dragontamer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We in the US complain about our lack of choice in the political system. We have two parties, making our choices rather limited in elections. However, China has a one party system. There is no counter to the Communist Party.

If you only vote Republican or only vote Democrat in a sense you've limited yourself to a one-party system.

Let's say you are sitting in your office for 8 hours. In one case you could leave but probably won't - in the other case your boss puts a lock on your door for those 8 hours. Would that make a difference to you?

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#107

Post by thrownaway2424 »

est wrote: post #29

No no no this is bad journalism. Is not just blocking "access" to gmail, but one out of of five Gmail's MX servers are blocked gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com (74.125.31.26, blocked) alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com to be specific, all traffic to address of 74.125.31.0/24, including gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com, got null routed af…

By the way, how did you figure out that network was blocked? Is there a looking-glass-alike I can use to check?

The reason I ask is because that particular network you mentioned is only one of dozens that Google serves up as the A record for gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. From my location, it's on 74.125.25.26 instead. And the MX for Google Apps hosted domain customers (including google.com itself) is aspmx.l.google.com, which (again from this location) is 173.194.79.27 or 74.125.28.26 or 74.125.20.27 or one of dozens of other IPs.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#108

Post by chingjun »

edwinyzh wrote: post #68
chingjun wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese government once blocked the download page of the python website (python.org), when they released python version 2.6.4. It is widely believed that it's because the version number triggered that[1]. Python website has since added another download link written in Chinese on their website. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_19... , called 六四事件 in Chinese, literally means six-four incid…

Hah! I didn't know that since I don't use Python, but I agree with the speculation of that blocking!

When PHP announced that they will skip PHP6, we joked that it is a smart move to avoid PHP version 6.4

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#109

Post by edwinyzh »

runewell wrote: post #102

I have only been to HK and Macau but never to the China mainland. Pardon my ignorance, but why does the Chinese government bother to censor the Internet? Are the people in China not happy with the progress that has occurred over the past few decades? Is the government really that concerned with their populace discussing politics or sensitive issues openly? Do Chinese provinces consider themselves to be separate and d…

I think the reasons include, but might not limited to two reasons:

1 - Prevent the people from reading and discussion sensitive issues - there are so many of them.

2 - Prevent the people from knowing universal values.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#110

Post by edwinyzh »

dragontamer wrote: post #96
edwinyzh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The people have chosen an autocratic government" - saying so is so unfair to us. Maybe people like me who desire for an unblocked Internet is a minority (when compared to the population in this country), but people who desire for safe milk and food, clean water and fresh air for their babies are not! But on the other hand, I must say that your observations described in your first paragraph are correct. Take the rece…

We in the US complain about our lack of choice in the political system. We have two parties, making our choices rather limited in elections. However, China has a one party system. There is no counter to the Communist Party.

I think it's only a portion of the issue - another difference is that the US has a true constitution-based legal system.
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