Internet in China
 

Staying at Hyatts in Shanghai and Shenzen. Does the internet at these hostelries work pretty much like in most other countries. Do they block access to anything like Skype or news sites? Is it safe to do online banking there?

There's a thread on this in the FAQs sticky that probably answers most of your questions. My experience was the internet mostly worked as usual but certain things were unavailable like Twitter, YouTube, and Face Book.

The hotel won't do the blocking--it's the great firewall. At the Hyatt in Beijing I was able to get twitter and youtube access, and Skype has not been a problem anywhere (except for connection speed).

China does, from time to time, block some sites, though which sites vary. I've never seen FT blocked. :)

If you little or no money in your accounts.


Dan Harris: China Law Blog

Do The Walls Have Ears, Part II: Traveling To China Naked. Electronically, That Is.

Always use a personal VPN service while in China - always.

Make sure your laptop has firewall on and a current anti-virus software running.

Let the record show that, in Beijing at least, August 30, 2012 (working hours) was the worst I've ever seen it. It appears that they are experimenting with some new censorship techniques, and have started off with a blanket approach, which they will (hopefully) fine tune later.

Basically, google.com and yahoo.com load without fail, but when I click on search results, those links are almost unilaterally blocked (e.g. 5% success rate). Since I let my VPN lapse (I don't use FB/twitter, and can live without youtube) a few months ago, I felt completely and utterly powerless doing my research work, but I managed to (grudgingly) make do with baidu. Again, I honestly believe this is a very short lived trend so I'm not going to get back on the VPN bandwagon on account of today alone. But, on the off chance the game continues for a week or more, I won't give it a second thought.

ETA: I checked google/yahoo again seconds after posting, and it appears that order has been restored.

Do you really mean 12th August, or today?
I found one day this week absolutely awful, but today wasn't so bad.

Without vpn, I can't download files from gmail 30% of the time, let alone search results etc, so I find it really critical for my work.

tb

In Shanghai (admittedly an internet cafe, not my own system) I have given up on using Google. The links always redirect to Baidu.

Sorry, I meant yesterday (already corrected).

I would give up my western toilet before I'd give up my VPN! :p

Have never used a VPN connection in China and have no plans to change that. When in Rome...use Baidu. ;)

hardcore!

I lived off my company VPN for the first half year I was here and thought I could do fine. That was until my friend let me have his account to use. Within weeks I told him to send the renewal notice my way - no way I'm giving it up!

IMO, google is categorically better than baidu (note: Chinese clones of foreign sites are often superior to the cloned: witness 'weibo v. twitter', 'qunar v. kayak', 'taobao v. ebay', etc). But, for standard research functions, google is still #1, particularly insofar as images are concerned.

I agree with the dog, something happened yesterday in China in regards to visiting google, yahoo, ect. VPN is a key here now to access anything foreign with reliability.

Let me add another data point: Here in Shanghai no more gmail without vpn.

What a sad day and it really makes me feel unwelcome :(

Although internet in china can be a pain, including occasional gmail 'outages', I don't think one generally needs a vpn to access email, most of the time. I just checked my gmail (in bj) without vpn to see if anything had changed, and all was well.

tb

The last couple of weeks I have had some terrible problems with Google and Google Translate specifically. I always maintain at least one account for the periods of time when Beijing is messing about with the Wall. And since a poitically sensitive time is quickly approaching, I half expect it to happen again.

It helps too when dealing with attachments on gmail, helps increase reliability with uploads... And the one I use works over ChinaUnicom's 3G. Plus, how else are you going to access your Netflix queue if you don't have a VPN.

just to add some current status, I'm currently in Shanghai at a hotel and the following does not seem to work
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Instagram

All else - google, google docs, skype, FT(!) and Gmail all seem to work the same as if I was at home

We get these most of the time, though Google Docs can be fickle on occasion.

This one is surprising -- I've never had any trouble accessing Instagram via my Unicom 3G SIM, and many of my Chinese friends have been using it for years without problems. As recently as a few days ago, I was using it in SH without problems.

There has been some recent speculation that the FB buyout of Instagram might result in a GFW block, and it would be sad if this had actually happened.

I've had trips to Shanghai when even Yahoo Sports wouldn't load. Google sites are a constant target since the unpleasantness from a few years ago. I'm sure the gov is constantly probing, experimenting. They're flailing at shadows and wind rustling. Probably not in a good mood today after their 'new, improved' education for HK got shot down.

I couldn't access my yahoo fantasy football leagues on Friday. Today, no problem. It's strange these off and on outages.

Same thing happened to me a few yrs ago - was there for the tennis tournament - tried to do my 'fantasy' picks - no luck (only had one day to make the picks so didn't retry). Maybe it's a word (and its other meaning) that gets added scrutiny.