I’m a Chinese resident, get me outta here!

 http://www.ausbt.com.au/china-blocking-gmail-and-secure-vpns

A RECOUNT FROM FRIDAY NIGHT:

Today at exactly 7:30pm or so my Express VPN failed on me. Checking all the servers I was not able to cross the Great Fire Wall Of China, and struggled to link two more VPN’s to no avail.

VPN number one: something called GoTrusted (always telling me to click “secure connection”) is actually quite insecure with itself and tried to disconnect and tether off as soon as I was connected. Loading Blogspot from GoTrust was like eating shit out of a horses’ mouth. In conclusion: it did not work. So then I decided to move on to my next VPN.

This time something called Surf VPN with a Tunnelback installation, all this is sounding very Australian somehow. This VPN required me to pay via a Google email account, which I did so, as soon as I paid, I could not get into Gmail to retrieve my password. Remembering a friend had said she couldn’t get on Gmail a few days ago, I decided that that must have been blocked by the firewall too.

Somewhere along the Googling VPN’s I found a link to an Australian business site with a post about the firewall of China blocking different sources of online media and websites. Apparently, a recent uprising of protestors on the web in China were using VPN’s to access their communication site. Thus, the Chinese government has shut them down. This site told me that Gmail is being monitored too, and that SSL VPN’s work better because it is hard for the Chinese government to monitor. Then having said this the article advised a SSL VPN Witopia at the end of the article, which upon one click on its link, quickly revealed that the VPN download site from Witopia was no longer working. Really, it is quite dumb how the site has decided to suggest and give kind and direct advice to our China resident viewers by sabotaging Witopia use in China form the start by giving it out blatantly. I think from now on we should think with our heads on this one.

Apparently the Chinese government is also blocking Skype, a product I have not had trouble accessing, apart from the somewhat irregular pauses in the system when I my status shows offline when my computer is actually connected to the internet. The site also states that the government has been joining paid VPN’s in order to figure out if the proxies actually work; to bring them down. This I personally find ironic and hilarious, binding to the phrase “if you can’t beat em’ join em’ ”. Despite the blocking of Chinese VPN’s a Chinese official in charge of the Information Office Internet Affairs Bureau of China’s ruling State Council states that there has never been a problem with corporate company VPN’s, suggesting that the government, being the “socialist” country with the capitalist characteristics it entails, does not want their censoring of protestors to influence their fair trade policy or economy and trade with foreign investors.

Later, after some more web surfing a Mr. Nyguyen’s web service blog yielded some quotes that can typically describe the fury most people like myself feel because of the censoring China is doing to its users on the world wide web. Mr. Nyguyen says “At first I thought binh.name is blocked, and I was thinking ‘Why? Did I do anything against China?’. Then when I changed the DNS to 203.12.160.35 I realized it's just China ISP has really poor DNS server that doesn't even know half of the World Wide Web. Notice the lines ‘why did I do anything against china’ and "doesn't even know half the www" really are humorous highlights to Mr. Nyguyen’s argument. His statements and quote is more like an outcry for help that many of us living here in the PRC are willing to extend and make obvious.

The Chinese government strongly censors its people and everyone living in it, I guess I would not blame the government, because every time there is a political uprising about to take place they turn it down and shut it off. How do they do it? They find how these pre-protestors are communicating on the internet, what social networking site are they using, what VPN are they using to access which site that bears a main portal of communication for them;  helping them to communicate. This communication could ultimately lead to a successful revolution, which could take place at a scale even greater than the May 4^th movements that took place a few decades ago. So for now, China is uber sensitive and watching out for every little flame that lights up in its rice fields. Seeing the North African and Arab world, with authoritarian governments and their countries at stake, in reference to the events in Egypt and Libya, it is not surprising that China may be doing this for the right reasons, to protect its government system from any reversal of fortune. Just like Syria and the like, China is blocking sites for a reason, to preserve not only the legacy of Chairman Mao, Deng, and their successors, but in a way more than others; the legacy of the Chinese people.