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Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

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Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#31
post #13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the generic 'Chinese' who are at fault, but their government. Economic sanctions, like always, will just hurt the people while strengthening the government's power base.

to a point... enough economic pressure will eventually trigger revolution... or can at least make it very unpleasant for the government to continue it's ridiculous position

The economic pressure has to be on the people in power, not the man on the street. I doubt those in power are suffering.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#32
post #11

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say this is probably due to the 18th Party Congress going on in Beijing right now, and that the block will be lifted sometime in the next week, once the transfer of power is over. I think we may see some more moderates come to power, so I wouldn't expect this to continue. Whether or not Wang Yang gets a seat in the Standing Committee will be a good bellwether though.

Yeah, China tightens up things a lot around important dates and arguably this Party Congress is the most important for a decade due to the leadership change. My guess is that this is to prevent rumours/gossip from spreading quickly via channels they don't control.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#33
post #11

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say this is probably due to the 18th Party Congress going on in Beijing right now, and that the block will be lifted sometime in the next week, once the transfer of power is over. I think we may see some more moderates come to power, so I wouldn't expect this to continue. Whether or not Wang Yang gets a seat in the Standing Committee will be a good bellwether though.

Where can I read more?

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#34
Aargh. I'm leaving for a vacation in China in a week and a half. I guess I'm going to have to set up my own VPN tunnel to ensure that I can still access my email, etc.

I'm assuming I can set something up through my dd-wrt router at home. Off to read the docs...

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#35

Aargh. I'm leaving for a vacation in China in a week and a half. I guess I'm going to have to set up my own VPN tunnel to ensure that I can still access my email, etc. I'm assuming I can set something up through my dd-wrt router at home. Off to read the docs...

Yes, set up a private tunnel, don't rely on Tor, Google blocks a lot of their exit nodes, so it's just unusable most of the time.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#36

Does anyone know what this means for US websites that use Google Analytics and are visited by people in China? Not that many of my website visitors are in China but I'm wondering if it will also stop the tracking code from working. I'm guessing it would since it won't be able to connect back to GA.

The same thing that happens when we visit websites with Facebook embedded. It just fails.

'it' being the embedded component or the whole page?

My guess is that it would depend on whether the old sychronous code or the newer async GA code was used. Not sure if the former is even still supported.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#37

Aargh. I'm leaving for a vacation in China in a week and a half. I guess I'm going to have to set up my own VPN tunnel to ensure that I can still access my email, etc. I'm assuming I can set something up through my dd-wrt router at home. Off to read the docs...

When I was in China for a year, I just used a company dev server with a ssh socks proxy. It worked well, and it is one command in the terminal, and changing 1 setting in network preferences.

This is much easier than trying to find VPN service that isn't blocked.

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#38
I'm located in Shenzhen, China and all those domains work as usual except for Google+ and Google Docs which have been banned for a while. Google DNS also works as usual. Even Google.cn redirects to Google.com.hk as usual. Guess I'm either lucky or this was a very short lived ban in the middle of the night.

edit: Reading the article again, it seems Google didn't actually confirm the block. They simply stated there was nothing wrong on their end. I also strongly doubt they got in touch with a Google China representative in the middle of a friday night. I smell link bait...

Re: Chinese government blocks Google.com, Gmail, Google+, Maps, Docs and more

#40
post #30
post #25

I was in China just last month and was surprised how openly everyone circumvents the blocks. I stayed in a very large 25+ floor 4* hotel where the entire free wifi went through a VPN. My Chinese friend said the government turn a blind eye because they know business needs it and they want the business.

you mean, as long as one is not saying something the government dislike anything goes... just like in any dictatorship.

If that is your qualification for a dictatorship, then the U.S falls in that category as well. See WikiLeaks, and Assange.
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