Architect of China's Great Firewall Embarrassed After Needing To Use VPN (shanghaiist.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Fan Binxing, architect of the China's infamous Great Firewall, was put in the embarrassing position of having to use a VPN in front of a live audience when trying to access a blocked web page. Fang Binxing was giving a speech on internet safety at his alma mater, the Harbin Institute Technology. During the speech, he presented a defense for internet sovereignty and used North Korea's own version of the system as a talking point. Things got awkward really fast, however, when he attempted to access blocked web pages hosted in South Korea to demonstrate his point. From there his speech went from being a defense of the Firewall to a demonstration of its stupidity. Unable to access the websites he needed to continue his speech, Fang somewhat unexpectedly resorted to the same illicit tool which all expats in China are all familiar with: the beloved VPN. This raises one question: Is China's Great Firewall that easy to circumvent, or are members of the government treated differently than normal citizens?

Comments

He just happened to have one handy?

[KGIII]

So he just happened to have a VPN and an account all ready and set to go or is this a normal thing? I'm guessing it's the latter. I'm not sure why you'd be embarrassed about it. It's not like he just happened to notice while being shown live. He had one already there, installed, and an account configured.

By the way, I've been to China and, as near as I can tell, everyone that I met had a VPN - usually one of the 'free' ones that you load up in your browser as an extension. And no, they didn't seem embarrassed about it. Then again, they weren't live and the person who configured the firewall.

If Only There Was a Website to Answer That!

[eldavojohn]

This raises one question: Is China's Great Firewall that easy to circumvent, or are members of the government treated differently than normal citizens?

If only we had a website the covered this sort of stuff ... oh right, we do! New VPN IP addresses probably take a while for them to identify the traffic on and block. But there are plenty of services like HMA that constantly roll out new ip addresses. So as long as you're a mouse willing to play whackamole with your cat overlords ... Annoying, yes, but that's the definition of the internet in China.

In response to the second part, that is always true regardless of the answer to the first part. Not only are members of the government are treated differently but also their families. The "party" class enjoys many many perks. Unmonitored VPN connections would be laughable compared to their insider trading, disregard for the law and instant attack dogs they routinely utilize.

While you're accepting suggestions, why isn't my aforementioned article linked in the "You may like to read:" section of this page? Those stories seem to have nothing to do with China's firewall yet a simple google search shows a whole slew of those stories on Slashdot. I think you could get timothy's family to help you track that stuff if you would return his body to them. They only want closure, it doesn't matter if it has to be a closed casket funeral!