The Great Firewall (GFW), sometimes referred to as the Net Nanny, may be the bane of your existence in China. But it doesn’t have to be.
Most blocked sites (blogging services, certain news sites, anything with “sensitive” words), can be accessed in China with the use of a proxy. Those willing to fork over some cash can spring for a Virtual Private Network (VPN) – this highly recommended one goes for $40/year.
Gearing up for the Olympics a few sites that were blocked for a long time, have now been miraculously unblocked including: blogspot, Wikipedia (both English and Chinese!)
In exchange Facebook seems to be going in and out. EDIT (7/8/08): Stay on top of which sites are blocked/unblocked with this handy list.
Some tips and tricks from the veterans:
- Those who use Gmail and Google docs in China may find that it constantly disconnects. To fix that simply add an “s” after http making the connection “secure” example: http://mail.google.com/ becomes https://mail.google.com
- For Myspace junkies, occasionally profiles are blocked. Quick fix, delete the “profile” from the address and refresh. Example: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=????? becomes http://myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=?????
- In China you can access the Flickr site, but not see photos. To get around that install this handy plugin to Firefox: Access Flickr.
- The Fastest workaround for WordPress and Blogspot (when it becomes blocked again) is a .pac file.
- Feedburner RSS posts are blocked, even when the original content is not, so sometimes you just have to go to the original site and search for the article in question.
- Post to your favorite blogs even though they are blocked through non-blocked posting services like Ping.fm (supports Livejournal, Blogger, Xanga…).
Let us know any other tips and tricks we failed to mention by telling us your favorites in the comments below!
Related posts:
Download Hotspot Shield from Anchorfree outside China when you get a chance. You can open all the sites after going back to the country.
Thanks for the tip, Mike!
I’ve had some interest/experience with this. When I brought a China travel consulting site online it was viewable in Chongqing but not Beijing. I tried several content changes including anything containing “BBC” which may be filtered. Finally, I just had my hosting provider assign a new IP address for my site. After DNS propagation, it was viewable and has remained so. Don’t use any shared/virtual IP addressing or dynamic DNS.
Hopefully, this will help someone on the US side to make their site accessible to their Chinese friends…..
[...] gfw, Internet | by chinkerfly Tips for getting around that pesky firewall can be found here: The Chonx Guide: Accessing Blocked Sites in China (I posted the entry over there because it’s Not blocked, unlike this wordpress [...]