The internet in China is a strange beast. The "great firewall" is much talked about, but what does it really amount to?
First off, it should be noted that I can only answer this question from firsthand experience to such an extent. Most Chinese people do not speak English and similarly seem oblivious to the availability of free online translators. The great firewall is not about stopping access, it's about limiting access. Therefore, the language barrier has done a large bit of the government's work already. English pages are not firewalled in the same way that pages written in Chinese are. I can only presume that the English pages are given a good deal of slack in comparison to the Chinese bloggers who from time to time will actually be given prison terms for saying something wrong. However, the great firewall is still extremely visible and is a royal pain in the tuckus.
What does the firewall look like? A generic error page. There's no official Commie seal of disapproval. For Chrome it says "oops... yada, yada, yada" for Firefox it looks like the page timed out.
What is firewalled? The following is a list of the big ones which absolutely kill me.
- Facebook
- Youtube
- Pictures on wikipedia
- Certain wikipedia pages (eg: Korean war)
- Western computer component websites (tigerdirect, etc)***
- Until recently wikitravel.org
- The "cached" option on Google search
- Google images
- My news feed relating to the Arab Spring is 不好
Those are the main ones that I encounter. From there it can be pretty random. Maybe one out of ten Google results on average will be blocked. More or less depending on what you searched. But for instance there was a blog from some Jewish students in Israel called "Jewlicious" which was firewalled. For the most part you have a good idea of what will definitely hit the firewall. Freedomhouse, you're obviously going to need a VPN for. As to what might hit the firewall though, there's really no telling and it can be immensely frustrating.
The other strange thing about the internet here is that it's often slow in connecting to web pages. Yet for downloading torrents (so I'm told, of course I would never download something illegally) it's reasonably fast, like 400-500 k/s. I would be happy with those speeds, if, err, I were involved in such things. Cell phone data plans... don't get me started. My theory is actually that they sell both 2g and 3g plans, but apparently mine is a 2g which is always on edge and drives me insane.
Long story short, the internet in China is enough of a pia to be on my list of reasons to move to Taiwan. It's not really high up there, but let's just say it's on there.
As to how Chinese people think about it... that's one of those topics they're not likely to let loose on foreigners with loads of opinions. What I can say is that when I'm not going through a VPN there are lots of banner ads (in Hanzi) advertising VPNs for the specific purpose of facebook or youtube:
First off, it should be noted that I can only answer this question from firsthand experience to such an extent. Most Chinese people do not speak English and similarly seem oblivious to the availability of free online translators. The great firewall is not about stopping access, it's about limiting access. Therefore, the language barrier has done a large bit of the government's work already. English pages are not firewalled in the same way that pages written in Chinese are. I can only presume that the English pages are given a good deal of slack in comparison to the Chinese bloggers who from time to time will actually be given prison terms for saying something wrong. However, the great firewall is still extremely visible and is a royal pain in the tuckus.
What does the firewall look like? A generic error page. There's no official Commie seal of disapproval. For Chrome it says "oops... yada, yada, yada" for Firefox it looks like the page timed out.
What is firewalled? The following is a list of the big ones which absolutely kill me.
- Youtube
- Pictures on wikipedia
- Certain wikipedia pages (eg: Korean war)
- Western computer component websites (tigerdirect, etc)***
- Until recently wikitravel.org
- The "cached" option on Google search
- Google images
- My news feed relating to the Arab Spring is 不好
Those are the main ones that I encounter. From there it can be pretty random. Maybe one out of ten Google results on average will be blocked. More or less depending on what you searched. But for instance there was a blog from some Jewish students in Israel called "Jewlicious" which was firewalled. For the most part you have a good idea of what will definitely hit the firewall. Freedomhouse, you're obviously going to need a VPN for. As to what might hit the firewall though, there's really no telling and it can be immensely frustrating.
The other strange thing about the internet here is that it's often slow in connecting to web pages. Yet for downloading torrents (so I'm told, of course I would never download something illegally) it's reasonably fast, like 400-500 k/s. I would be happy with those speeds, if, err, I were involved in such things. Cell phone data plans... don't get me started. My theory is actually that they sell both 2g and 3g plans, but apparently mine is a 2g which is always on edge and drives me insane.
Long story short, the internet in China is enough of a pia to be on my list of reasons to move to Taiwan. It's not really high up there, but let's just say it's on there.
As to how Chinese people think about it... that's one of those topics they're not likely to let loose on foreigners with loads of opinions. What I can say is that when I'm not going through a VPN there are lots of banner ads (in Hanzi) advertising VPNs for the specific purpose of facebook or youtube:
***The interesting thing about tiger direct being firewalled is that imo it's another instance of the protected market here. The Chinese have found a new form of non-tariff barrier. Just firewall your internet based competitors.
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