ChinaGeeks Blocked in China (Again)
Well, I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. The site seems to have been GFWed as of sometime around noon today, with people in multiple locations and multiple connections all confirming the block.
As with all blocks the government makes, there was no notification or reasoning, so we can only speculate as to what finally brought the hammer down.
The government does seem to be starting to pay attention to English-language China blogs though, and more and more have been blocked over the past few years. Just a month or so ago, the excellent ESWN was blocked. I suspect that our blog will not be the last, so if you’ve been holding out on buying a VPN, you might want to finally make that leap.
The block will certainly affect our traffic, and is a serious issue for our Chinese-language version, as most Chinese readers don’t have and can’t be expected to buy VPNs. We’ll try to set up a mirror or something like Danwei II so that people without a way to scale the wall can still see the site. In the meantime, if you don’t have regular access to a VPN, there are some temporary solutions. I suggest vtunnel, or one of the many proxy extensions that exist for browsers like Firefox and Chrome (I use Chrome and have been using the “One-Click Proxy” extension at work where I have no VPN, it works).
In any event, rest assured that posting will continue uninterrupted. Just don’t expect anything else today. Today, all you get is this image of a Panda hopping the Great Firewall. We’re happy to leave the creepily manicured pastures of China’s internet and join the other Grass Mud Horses ranging freely on the open plains of the real internet, where river crabs fear to tread.
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Harmony, such a sweet word.
Sino-Gist has been blocked too!
It isn’t blocked here in Guangxi.
@ Liuzhou Laowai: Interesting. Maybe it’s a bug and the site will be back online shortly. But I’d guess it’s more likely that it will be blocked there too, within a few days…
That post about ‘peace prizes’ did it.
@ pug_ster: Possible, but I doubt it. We’ve mentioned Liu and the Charter in plenty of posts before. And there are TONS of news stories about the Nobel Prize nomination, I haven’t found any that are blocked yet.
Now that you’re blocked, you have nothing to fear and can start posting in ways that won’t get you labeled 五毛 anymore!
It is a shame, though. And the worst part is that some mindless sheep in this country actually support censorship!
Except, you aren’t blocked at all. Delusions of grandeur?
Hi,
I really like the work you’re doing on this blog. Such a shame it’s blocked for the Chinese readers. Personally I’m using an incredibly easy to use and fast service called “Freegate”. It is supported in many languages, also Chinese. The problem is that the website from where you can download it is blocked and not up to date. What we can do is the following: if you can send me an e-mail, I can zip the file of the most recently updated version(only 3MB) and send it to you. Maybe you can think of a way to distribute it to your Chinese readers.
Let me know, cheers
Eric Havaby: Where are you? I’ve gotten a few reports from outside Beijing suggesting the site isn’t blocked there (yet), but it has been inaccessible from within Beijing for several days now, on many different connections and ISPs. It is most definitely blocked.
My guess is that the block is taking time to propagate around the rest of the country. Of course, one never knows with these things, but I suspect we’ll be blocked everywhere soon enough if we aren’t already.
(If you’re not in China, and using one of those websites that claims to tell you what sites are blocked in China, don’t bother, those things are totally useless)
Blocked in southern Guangdong!
pug_ster could be right. Specifically, it might have been the rather long discussion discussion about 6/4 that we had.
I’d apologize, but I don’t know if that’s the real reason.
Regardless, no need to apologize. Like I said, this was inevitable.
URL banning seems to also apply to foreign users accessing sites within china. eg.
http://www.yinglisolar.com/?q=google.blogspot.com will cause a “connection reset” message.
substitute this with any Chinese hosted website. even http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/?q=google.blogspot.com will result in “connection reset”.