I also suspect that Unicom operates on different protocols than the major land based ISPs (e.g. Telecom/Netcom) because my mifi router is now actually more reliable than the internet in my residence and office. Google sans VPN has been effectively useless for the past several days; while searches load pretty quickly, clicking on the results themselves is like watching grass grow.

As such, my two choices are:

1) google with VPN
-really slow
2) yahoo without VPN
-yahoo isn't as good as google, but this approach is arguably the best until 18C is over and done with (for those of us who lack really expensive VPNs)

If push came to shove, I would grudgingly use baidu as a third option, but I really dislike baidu (first ~8 results are often paid).

Honestly, as annoying as this internet problem is, it's merely a small manifestation of the underlying issues; transactional business is basically at a standstill this week because everyone is in "wait and see" mode (i.e. who cares how fast your internet is if you can't actually get anything of substance accomplished?). The US election is also a factor. But, I'm confident that as soon as the dust settles, we'll all be able to resume making money.

With regard to the paranoiaocracy concept, I've now spent enough time in these parts to give the Chinese a pass on this point. IMO, it's their country, and they are free to run it as they see fit. What's more I'm not the least bit shocked by the fact that its leaders are stinking rich.