China Starts/Stops Blocking Google

shekared was one of a number of readers to write in to tell a similar story. He says "I'm an American currently living and working in Chongqing, China. As of 9am (UTC +8) China began blocking google.com, gmail.com, google analytics and many if not most other google sites other than google.cn. Internet speed for connections outside the mainland have in general have come to a crawl. Surprisingly this has yet to pick up major coverage in the press. Using an open proxy or VPN for connection to hosts outside of the mainland continues to allow access to google, as does connecting directly to a google.com IP address. As of 6pm (UTC +8) access to gmail and google.com have returned to normal."

Comments

Block Google Since Bing Will Play Ball

[eldavojohn]

I find it interesting that their little "trial run" of blocking Google comes so soon after Bing decides to filter out anything sensitive (you know porn, skeletons, pandas) to China. So if we've got on big player playing ball, let the other one know what will happen to them if they don't. Another motive could be a a display of defiance to the West's requests to stop with all the blocking and blocking software? Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's many factors.

Gauging response?

[ComputerDruid]

It seems to me that google is one of the sites on the internet that make china's censorship work much more difficult. It's not hard to imagine that they'd like google gone for good. Unfortunately, google is a very real part of a lot of people's lives.

Is it possible that this (and other similar actions) are attempts to see if they would be able to get away with blocking google for a longer period of time, and not cause a mass uproar?

my experiences...

[cies]

im traveling in china for the last 6 weeks and the state of internet connections here is very random.

domestic sites, like the immensely popular QQ and baidu, are always _very_ responsive.

google sometimes gets a slow down to the extend that it is nearly unusable (that really help people here to move over to the super fast and slightly more chineese friendly baidu).

the main thing is the randomness, if it is connectivity/ congestion issues, or some conspiracy: no-one knows.

regardless of china's public claims

[circletimessquare]

making google unreliable is a subtle argument for chinese citizens to depend upon chinese competitors to google, such as baidu

http://www.baidu.com/

does the outlay of that page look familiar to you?

for example, if my gmail account in china is unreliable- due to no fault of google, but unreliable nonetheless, that means i would tend to use some other email provider for that vital service. for baidu, all you have to do is have a fellow nationalist stooge in the government hit the flicker switch on google's traffic every now and then. since china is filtering everything anyway via centralized national authority, that's not hard to arrange

its a subtle and effective form of protectionism, something which the usa and other trading partners of china have noticed a severe uptick of recently, due to the global economic climate. which is especially hypocritical, since china, as a major exporter, is always complaining about protectionism

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/economy/24yuan.html

HONG KONG -- China has begun a concerted effort to keep its export economy humming, even as demand for its goods has plummeted with the global downturn.

Risking the ire of the United States and other trading partners, the Chinese government has quietly started adopting policies aimed at encouraging exports while curbing imports, even though China, as one of the world's largest exporters, has aggressively criticized protectionism in other countries.

The government has sharply expanded three programs to help exporters, giving them larger tax rebates, more generous loans from state-owned banks to finance trade, and more government-paid travel to promote themselves at trade shows around the world.

At the same time, Beijing has banned all local, provincial and national government agencies from buying imported goods except in cases where no local substitute exists.