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Gmail blocked in China

reuters.com

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Re: Gmail blocked in China

#181

Post by azmenak »

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?

I've been living in China for over 4 months now, using a simple VPN I setup on Digital Ocean has been the most stable (tunnel stays open for as long as the internet connection is available)

Tor is semi-blocked here, you won't be able to establish a connection to the network without a tunnel.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#182

Post by School-Cotton »

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…

To add to what others said, the Chinese government is a bit obsessed with the Soviet collapse, which many in the Chinese system see as having been causes by liberalizing too quickly. Gorbachev allowed freedom of speech and the Union disintegrated soon after, and that was before we had communication force multipliers like the Internet.

It's not necessarily completely self serving; many Chinese leaders do have their people's interests at heart. (Not all do, of course.) It's easy to argue that the many of the former Soviet republics are doing much worse now than they were in 1989.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#184

Post by z3t4 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #53
salmonellaeater wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Google's mail servers can't communicate with servers within China, so any user of a Chinese mail service will not be able to send mail to Gmail users (and vice versa). If you are within China using a VPN to access Gmail, Google still can't send emails back in to Chinese machines.

Ah. Seems dumb of them. There are millions of Chinese people all around the world that will be trying to email their family back home. Why block just one email provider? Why try to segregate yourself from the world's email network? It isn't even going to work because what every Chinese person will do is get a tunnel to sign up for the non-Chinese email service (maybe even Gmail!) and it will just further push people…

Possible because they don't want USA/NSA to read their mail. And probably because they can't force Google to let them read "their" mail.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#185

Post by fatjokes »

Chronic30 wrote: post #123
bilbo0s wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you understand different values to be important than a Chinese does. A Chinese may not care about open internet as much as you do. (Though even that is for different reasons than you outlined. ie-not so much because of 'decadent values' as much as because the average Chinese believes the West uses the internet and Western news media outlets to 'keep China down'. It's more for nationalistic reasons than for va…

Beijing routinely sends it's military to remote regions and kills thousands of people (usually Muslims) and it never hits the world news. Beijing also prevents information (as well as people) flowing from one part of the country to another, both physically and digitally, to prevent outbreaks (typically against the government). These are just two examples. Please tell me how Beijing is alleviating oppression.

> Beijing routinely sends it's military to remote regions and kills thousands of people (usually Muslims) and it never hits the world news.

Citation? Unrest in Xinjiang seems to rank pretty high on NYTimes' headlines.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#186

Post by fatjokes »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #173
kaptain wrote: post #44

The sentiment that access to Google services doesn't matter because there are sufficient Chinese replacements is absolutely wrong. The Chinese government is handicapping its tech labor development by blocking Google. I teach a basic web development workshop to university and vocational school students. One of the things we teach is how to look up things for youself on the internet. (Is that a cry of disbelief I hear?…

FYI, Bing is not blocked in China. That is all.

Anybody know why this might be? Is it because Microsoft has been historically friendlier to China (vs. Google) or because it's even worse than Baidu?

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#187

Post by fatjokes »

twoodfin wrote: post #59
unixpunx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think China will be able to compete internationally in the software industry. That is a very self-centered point of view, in recent european TED talks there were speakers like Mikko Hypponen from F-Secure, that there should be "european" versions of Google, Facebook, so we can avoid all the dragnet datamining etc. unethical web development solutions and NSA spying that somehow pass in the US.

If such products are created and succeed, it will be because they competed well with their American counterparts. The equivalent Chinese products don't face any competition at all.

So it would have nothing to do with all the legal quagmires the EU is currently trying to drag (e.g.) Google through, such as News in Spain, antitrust lawsuits, right-to-be-forgotten?

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#188

Post by fatjokes »

edwinyzh wrote: post #79
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #75

Not surprising considering the tricks they've been pulling of late. What can be said here? The people have chosen an autocratic government and often, without me even provoking them, will tell me how superior is is to western values, the same way Russians will also do. As an international traveler and sometimes international worker, this is fairly typical stuff. I see this kind of thing on VK and Facebook all the time…

"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…

> Take the recent Hong Kong protest for an example, almost all people I know, including the highly educated people, are "tricked" by the censored local newspaper and are not on the same side of the HK people, and that made me sad and irritated

As I understood it, the HK protestors undermined their own support within China with their racism and condescension toward mainland Chinese and the perception* that they never protested autocratic British rule. If I were a Chinese citizen, even if I wanted the same things as the HK protestors, I wouldn't support them out of self-respect.

*I say perception to give HK the benefit of the doubt. A quick Googling didn't yield anything except an unhelpful Quora answer.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#189

Post by eru »

thesz wrote: post #178
eru wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By `energy', do you mean the same thing physicists mean? If yes, Russia has lots of oil, and China (and anyone else) can just build nuclear power plants. Problem solved.

Yes, the same thing. Sun energy in heat form is accesible for everyone. Oil require substantial investment. Also keep in mind that all this is historical and that even replacing all people in bureacratic machine will make the dame machine to rwappear. E.g., government of energy/resource constrained country will be prwtty much same as previous. Orherwise many people will die. If you can evict a person to streets at SF…

We had very different governments in Germany in the last 200 years (Kleinstaaterei, Empire, Weimar Republic, Nazis, Communists, Social Democracy). Conditions didn't change that much in the last 100 years.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#190

Post by lsseckman »

eitally wrote: post #52

Perhaps we are an edge case, but this has a potentially significant impact to certain businesses, namingly those that are Google Apps customers and rely on gmail to get work done. They'll be routing all web traffic over their own network via HK or Singapore, but... That doesn't help employees who need Mobile email access. As of now, companies can't count on remote access to corporate gmail by Chinese employees. We ha…

We're going to be running into the same problem as we're planning to roll out thousands of new Gmail & other google app accounts over the next couple of months.

Has Google made any statement about whether these will be operable or not?

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