That's part of the Cloudflare security service that Internet Brands subscribe to. There's a list of individual IP addresses, blocks of IP addresses and networks (ASNs) curated by Clouldflare that is in their opinion and based upon telemetry across all their customers and source of potential excessive malicious traffic. Internet Brands use this list as a block list and first stage of defence to defend the forums they host which includes FT.

There have been examples over in the Support Forum where significant ISPs in counties like Poland have ended up on the block list for several months.

I never had issues accesssing Flyertalk while in China from their internet or mobile network. Even WhatsApp works (no photos/media).

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I have never been blocked from FT by Cloudflare while using a Chinese IP address. Are you sure you weren't using a VPN when you grabbed that screenshot?

I've also never not been able to access FT from Chinese IP addresses except when FT itself is down (and we're talking 20+ years now).

That screenshot was taken with a VPN to show what it looks like. (I am not in China at the moment.)
I mainly use two ISPs in China, and FT doesn't work with one of them (it's blocked).

yep, at times, seems the blocks are by device, and or by city for me. Beidaihe was the worst blocks. ( At my favorite new marriott resort). Sanya depended on the bay, near the military/naval base a hard block, but in the Sanya city not blocked at the business JW hotel. probably different sencors..
Glad I'm back in US after 100 days in the mainland in 2023. I can watch football 24/7 on NFL network !.

👋

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cfd3e86a0f.jpg

Looks like with the visa-free policy implemented in December, a good start to inbound tourists from Europe : https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-01-0...DgKfAfC/p.html

214k citizens from the 6 visa-free countries entered in December 2023, more than half of which took advantage of the visa-free scheme. Let's hope the spring time brings even better results !

China is really doing an about face on visas and foreigners entering the country. Even pre-pandemic they were starting to be much more strict in regards to visas starting around 2017 it became much more of a process to get a visa, biometrics were implemented, etc. At that time people were willing to go through the process for business or tourism but there were complaints/grumblings.

Of course the pandemic came and China decided to completely shut itself off from the world for 3 years. Upon reopening they re-implemented the old policies and waited for the foreigners to come back. I guess it took about 11 months of waiting for them to realize very few people planned to visit China anymore. This, coupled with the poor economic situation here has led to the quickest about face in visa policy I’ve seen in my 20 plus years in China. It’s great for people who want to visit China, but I fear the damage may have been done already and these policies won’t have the impact the officials hope.

Yeah, it's quite amazing to see how they're suddenly so keen to get them foreigners back now.
Not so sure I agree with your conclusion though. Pretty sure tourism will rebound, and business people are also coming back from what I can tell.
Still need more flights though.

I predict the rebound (for both tourism and business) won't be nearly as strong as they're hoping for...news of us being locked in our houses for two months seemed to spread to other countries and had a profound impact on perceptions (e.g. China is no longer on my sister's family vacation list).

Flights from Europe are back to pre pandemic frequencies but I haven’t noticed any influx of Euros into Shanghai (which is the place Europeans seemed to love the most before Covid). I think this visa free policy is a recognition that visitors (and investments) from the EU are well behind expectations.

For sure.
Not saying it's recovered; but I am predicting it will...eventually. They are controlling it with a tap now, lets see how far they need to open that tap up for it to work.
Early days yet. Let this new slew of visa relaxations take effect. I reckon it will be a busy spring/summer '24....although I much prefer the emptier airports as they are now, ngl!

Oh, I bet you a nice coffee that China will be back on their vacation list soon enough. Spring 2025 at the latest. :tu:

Cheap airfares and easy visas should certainly help, but making the country desirable to visit again is something they seemingly haven't figured out yet.

At least in the cases of my sister, my dad, my favorite uncle, and many of my friends who used to live in Beijing/Shanghai during the fun years, there is honestly zero interest. Sure, I blame their willingness to buy into media spin for a large part of this, but their minds are currently unflappable.