The internet in China

[littlebabyjesus]

A recent stop-over in Beijing airport brought home to me how we take open internet access so much for granted. The Great Firewall of China was in full operation with the airport wifi. No foreign news sites. No google. But you could get Amazon or Ebay. And a certain Brixton-based website was fine!

Are there ways around this for people who live there? What is available and what is really hard to find? What falls through the gaps? China-based urbs, how do you navigate the censorship?

 

[Silas Loom]

Will this thread get Urban blocked in China?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I did wonder that. I can rephrase in code?

 

[Sue]

JimW is our local expert.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Will this thread get Urban blocked in China?

This is tricky. When do you self-sensor in order not to fall foul of the censors? I'm not sure.

Could it be moved to community chat? I am interested to find out tbf. editor has me on ignore, I think.

 

[JimW]

Some western news portals are available, AP is including sensitive reports on China, Sky News too but not the BBC or many of the papers. Social media almost all blocked. Here is fine as you noticed.
I tend to work round it mostly but do have a VPN, as for example doing the research on my current translation, a historical novel from Taiwan, would be impossible.
Another thing is western sites blocking Chinese IPs due to spam, usually a minor annoyance such as wanting to read an opposition football forum.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Oh and no Al Jazeera. Thought they might allow that one. Didn't think to try Sky.

 

[JimW]

The censorship is truly pathetic if technically accomplished. If I search on some politically innocuous historical query about land tenure during the Japanese occupation you'll get seeded results packed with official position papers on the Taiwan question.

 

[Cid]

How common are VPNs these days? Are there any that have worked around app store bans?

I think my friend has one, but only on their laptop... My impression was that they're pretty common, but that's within university educated people in a major city. And that was around when they started clamping down on them more.

For foreigners VPNs are pretty much ubiquitous I should say.

 

[JimW]

How common are VPNs these days? Are there any that have worked around app store bans?

I think my friend has one, but only on their laptop... My impression was that they're pretty common, but that's within university educated people in a major city. And that was around when they started clamping down on them more.

For foreigners VPNs are pretty much ubiquitous I should say.

You still see chat about them but not really sure, know a few friends who do use but they're no typical. Also see Chinese language ads for "wall-hopping" software fairly openly, oddly enough.

 

[Pickman's model]

You still see chat about them but not really sure, know a few friends who do use but they're no typical. Also see Chinese language ads for "wall-hopping" software fairly openly, oddly enough.

they're probably tracking the people who use that

 

[JimW]

they're probably tracking the people who use that

Yes, clearly a sort of coralled way to let white collar types access things but all recorded.