The Internet from China

The Internet from China

I was more prepared with a proxy/VPN software during my first trip to China. However, I was careless this time, and went unprepared. During my visit in 2014, I had a VPN/proxy configured to take care of the great China firewall. Just because I wanted to make sure I was still connected to Facebook. Following my Facebook deactivate, this time I was under the impression that this is not needed anymore. I was wrong! A long list of other web sites and services have been blocked in China, in addition to Facebook.

Interestingly, Google (search), Gmail (in basic HTML mode), Skype web beta, and duckduckgo worked with a simple proxy service (such as Eduroam). However, they did not work without them. Still ShareLatex, Skype application, Yahoo search, Amazon AWS, Wikipedia, and Meetup worked even without a proxy.

In addition to Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox (the web site as well as the application), Google+, Blogger, YouTube, and Google Docs did not work at all. It was interesting that, from a foreigner's perspective, a list of useful sites were blocked. Yahoo search was not blocked, while even duckduckgo was blocked (unless used with a proxy). Probably duckduckgo is a bigger threat than Yahoo?

P.S: Lately I found Shadowsocks. I am yet to test it.