Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gmail blocked in China

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 190 posts

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#61

Post by CitizenKane »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #45

What do citizens in China think of this? When Google Search was effectively banned, some scientists said that they depended on Google Scholar and Google Books, services which were also affected by the ban. Are Baidu and similar services really an effective replacement? I'm also wondering what would happen if the U.S. takes this to the World Trade Organization. Arbitrarily blocking some company's services could well b…

Most are aware of it, and for a lot of things there simply aren't good replacements. Baidu is pretty much a poor clone of Google and definitely doesn't work as well (even for Chinese language searches).

At the same time though, Chinese people are fairly used to censorship. It's pervasive at every level in China, so much so that it can sometimes be difficult to see.

I think there is a stymying effect here, but there is no way that the Communist Party will give up censorship of the internet over nothing.

There might be at least some possibility that using the WTO could help this. It did have an effect on the rare earth trade when China was restricting rare earth exports [1]. I suspect China would fight _far_ harder against this though.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#62

Post by thrownaway2424 »

salmonellaeater wrote: post #39
3pt14159 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't my tunnel work in China?

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.

I don't see how that follows. Your MX indicates your preference for inbound traffic. It has no relationship to outbound traffic.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#63

Post by simonh »

tokenadult wrote: post #42
simonh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese have never really had freedom, so they've nothing to compare it to. Even if they did, people are doing well over there right now. Any realistic attempt at political change insitgated from outside the political elite would introduce instability and risk for uncertain benefits. As long as China is economically improving there's no real impetus for change. The only protests you get are from those small minor…

That kind of "rationale" for not having democracy in Taiwan used to be convincing, until finally enough people there were fed up with not having freedom and protested in unison to gain freedom. For that matter, that kind of "rationale" used to be convincing in east Germany, until people there realized that if they acted in unison they could improve their lives still more by gaining freedom. I'm not sure when enough o…

Sure. Of course the situation could change. I hope it does. But right now people do not care enough to do anything about it, just like people before those other revolutions didn't (yet) care enough. When will that change though, tomorrow? Next year? Next decade? I have no idea, all I can do is relate what I know of the situation over there as I have experienced it.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#65

Post by edwinyzh »

atoponce wrote: post #17

The "Great Firewall" in China has over 600 million active Internet users. That's double the population of the United States. Baidu is the dominating search engine, there are replacement services for Twitter, Facebook, and others. Their IM "Wechat" has over 300 million active users alone. In all reality, Google, Facebook, and others would _love_ to have even the smallest presence in China to get access to that user ba…

If you guys are having a difficulty understanding what is 50 cent party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party), or its derivation, Ziganwu (http://www.china.org.cn/china/2013-12/27/content_31021911.ht...), I guess atoponce can be an example.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#66

Post by Trezoid »

jorgecastillo wrote: post #38
akramhussein wrote: post #3

Travelling in China right now. No Google services work but Gmail via SMTP on my iPhone seems fine. I'm not confident all emails go through though. Heading to Hong Kong tonight so not sure if that will be different. Using VPN does open everything but obviously becomes slower. It's not only Google though, all social media. Speaking to locals they don't care. There is an alternative for everything and they are better su…

>There is an alternative for everything and they are better suited to Chinese culture too. Well good for them, either way with this policy the Chinese government enforces, I don't think China will be able to compete internationally in the software industry.

China is such a massive place that Chinese players in particular don't need to compete outside china. Two of the largest social networks, QZone and Sina Weibo at >645,000,000 and >500,000,000 users respectively are at the level where they're only smaller than facebook and they're used almost exclusively in one country.

You don't need to compete internationally when you can get that kind of userbase domestically, and the Great Firewall is absolutely and to some extent intentionally a big part of that.

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#67

Post by chingjun »

Steko wrote: post #15
praptak wrote: post #4

What would happen if everybody added random "free tibet human rights xinjiang" triggers to their web pages? Or even better, randomly embed real snippets from organizations that fight for human rights in China.

I'd guess 'decreased traffic from China'. Something tells me that isn't the answer you are looking for.

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 incident since it happened on 4th of June

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#68

Post by edwinyzh »

chingjun wrote: post #67
Steko wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess 'decreased traffic from China'. Something tells me that isn't the answer you are looking for.

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!

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#69

Post by ximeng »

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.

Chinese companies will push to internationalise their products as the domestic internet market becomes saturated

Re: Gmail blocked in China

#70

Post by LiweiZ »

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?…

Baidu's search results are basically unusable compared to Google's. The only reason it thrives is it's one of the only few options in the country. Another thing, given the ruling party's organization structure and its way of execution/management, a rough cut(I mean 一刀切 in Chinese) style is exactly what you can find in almost all the things they do. A fine-grained approach can hardly be expected in this case. Not to mention there is a lack of feedback mechanism of this demand for decision makers.
Post reply on HN