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Internet in China

Internet in China

Old Apr 22, 2012, 8:35 am
  #1  
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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?
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Old Apr 22, 2012, 9:19 am
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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.
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Old Apr 26, 2012, 1:21 pm
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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).
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Old Apr 26, 2012, 1:34 pm
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China does, from time to time, block some sites, though which sites vary. I've never seen FT blocked.
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Old Apr 26, 2012, 2:01 pm
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Originally Posted by uppereastff
Is it safe to do online banking there?
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.
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Old Apr 26, 2012, 4:58 pm
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Always use a personal VPN service while in China - always.

Make sure your laptop has firewall on and a current anti-virus software running.
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Old Aug 30, 2012, 6:22 am
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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.

Last edited by moondog; Aug 30, 2012 at 7:55 pm
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Old Aug 30, 2012, 8:54 am
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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
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Old Aug 30, 2012, 3:05 pm
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Originally Posted by moondog
Let the record show that, in Beijing at least, August 12, 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.
In Shanghai (admittedly an internet cafe, not my own system) I have given up on using Google. The links always redirect to Baidu.
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Old Aug 30, 2012, 7:56 pm
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Originally Posted by trueblu
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
Sorry, I meant yesterday (already corrected).
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Old Aug 30, 2012, 8:43 pm
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I would give up my western toilet before I'd give up my VPN!
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Old Aug 30, 2012, 11:42 pm
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Have never used a VPN connection in China and have no plans to change that. When in Rome...use Baidu.
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Old Aug 31, 2012, 6:17 am
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Originally Posted by jiejie
I would give up my western toilet before I'd give up my VPN!
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!
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Old Aug 31, 2012, 6:46 am
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Originally Posted by mosburger
Have never used a VPN connection in China and have no plans to change that. When in Rome...use Baidu.
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.
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Old Aug 31, 2012, 12:49 pm
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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.
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