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Frequently readers must have noticed the slowdown in updating of this blog, and should understand. Ever since the Xi-Li regime took over, it has been increasingly suffocating in Beijing, even at the peak of the epic APEC blue. Expats are no longer exempted from fear of being at the wrong end of law. Angela Kockritz of Die Zeit recounted her escaping from the judicial system of China, after she managed to flee by air, accompanied by two German diplomats who were equally lost and confused.

About a month ago, Google was totally blocked. Chinese could no longer send email to a Gmail address. About a week ago, unregistered VPN services were blocked.

"There will be a way (to circumvent the GFW with technical means)", some external observers say. However, it's not about technology any more, when the political pressure has been cooked to this level. When the internal pressure is high enough, the system can seal any small leaks on itself.

Google reported that the entire Internet in China has by and large become a giant Intranet, thus Chinternet. According to Google's study, before the total block was implemented last month, only 3% of the traffic volume on the Chinese Internet was out bounding with most going to Google. In other words, at this time, Chinese no longer seek to visit foreign Internet services. It's a result of a continuous effort to cripple and disable foreign Internet services. Foreign Internet services had been bearing with a stigma of uncertain and unreliable. The government has strategically fostered domestic superior (reliable) 'alternatives': Baidu (Google), Weibo (Twitter), Renren (Facebook), Tudou (Youtube), Alibaba (eBay), etc.

The wall is getting taller, which is not news. But it is worth noting that Chinese people are no longer interested in going over the wall.

Top Websites Blocked by Chinese Government

Among the top 10 websites (according to traffic volume recorded by Alexa), 5 are blocked by the Chinese government. Among the top 1000 sites, 169 are blocked, a number raised from 62 (an increase of 172.58%) of last year 2013.

Top websites:
1. Google.com (100% in the last 90 days)
2. Facebook.com (100% in the last 90 days)
3. Youtube.com (100% in the last 90 days)
4. Yahoo.com (28% in last 90 days)
5. Bidu.com
6. Amazon.com
7. Wikipedia.com
8. Taobao.com
9. Twitter.com (100% in the last 90 days)
10. QQ.com

Other blocked sites include: blogspot.com, netflix.com, dropbox.com, nytimes.com, vimeo.com, flickr.com, slideshare.net, macys.com, archive.org, wsj.com, bloomberg.com, android.com, pastebin.com, instagram.com, wordpress.com, scribd.com, speedtest.net, tumblr.com, reddit.com, among others.

A complete list of websites blocked by the Chinese government can be found at GreatFire.Org.

Blooking of Github Led to Whitehouse Petition

Github become the newest major programming websites blocked by China's Great FireWall (GFW), following glories of sites such as SourceForge, Python, etc.

Concerned citizens filed a petition at the Whitehouse. The online petition asked the President to deny entry to the US to those "who help internet censorship, builders of Great Firewall in China." The Whitehouse pledge to respond to a petition if it can generate 100,000 signatures within 2 weeks. This petition collected about 3,000 votes in its first day.

Demanding an immigration policy change from the Whitehouse might be a long fetch. There are, actually, easier ways to do just the same, if the movement can gain the sympathy from the visa interviewers at the US's Beijing Embassy.

The embassy should be provided with a list of most notoriously active GFW researchers. Individual interviewer may block anyone who appears on that list from entering US. Per US laws, the interview agent must exercise her own judgement in each case, regardless of directives from her boss or other government agencies.

The GFW is the most extensive and most advanced content filtering and management system in the world. It is estimated thousands of researchers are working on this project on daily basis. Most of them keep a low profile. Few ever show their pride on the Wall in public, with the exception of two persons so far.

The first one is of course 'the Father of the GFW', Mr. Fang Binxing. In an interview, Mr. Fang said he truly believe the Wall is an important tool that benefits the Communists government. Because the government is for the people, thus it also benefits the people.

The second person is an associate professor Mr. Han Weili in Fudan University. The Wall is rarely discussed in public. When Professor Han posted a job ad for research assistants on the internal bulletin board system (BBS), several students questioned how could he do this in his conscience. Some commented that how would anyone get involved to fix their resume later on (so that not to offend any potential employers whom with no exception must have been victimized by the research). Han boasted his 12 years experience on the Wall, and stated that he only interested in the technology. A student pointed out there is a difference when you already knew how your technology would be deployed (against human mankind) but still work on it.

Mr. Han Weili should be found a spot on the list, no question about that.

Dr. Han's research activities can be viewed at his university homepage.

On an unrelated note, it seems the Great FireWall conducted an MITM attack targeting the Github. It is not clear whether the attack is sponsored by the government, or is a personal act launched by a few operators (Dr. Han). Visitors within China was cheated from a self-issued certificate when they tried to access the Github websites. Chinese government and GFW operators have the authority to issue security certificates with their root certificate privilege. The attack lasted about an hour. The fake certificate was captured and displayed at many security sites and blogs. While it is impractical to yank the root certificate controlled by Chinese government, concerned individuals should make an effort to remove it from their own computers.

Update: After the petition, the GFW Dr. Han issued a statement in which he denied any involvement in the GFW project ever. The Seagull found a screenshot of the exchanges between the GFW Dr. and a Fudan University student luosheng. Anyone reads Chinese can see with your own eyes.

China's Communication Cost Gone Wild

A health economy relies on unblocked flowing of entities, tangible (product, raw materials) or intangible (information, knowledge, labor, etc.). On both ends, the cost of communication is rising as a result of its political structure.

The Great FireWall (GFW) and Gold Shield Project not only blocked 80% of meaningful information flow, it also slowed down communications within mainland China as well as suppress innovations from within. These cost was mandated by the government to control people's mind.

The high cost of ground transportation, on the other hand, reflect a lost control of the central government in resource sharing deals with local authorities. The ground transportation cost in China is already twice of the world average and still climbing. In the first half of 2011, cost of ground transportation totaled CNY 3.7 trillion, a 18.5% increase from same period of last year. According to 2010 data, the raw profit of road toll companies is 59.14%, which place it one of the most profitable markets in China.

Although the central government would not like to see a package tolled dozens of times on a stretch of 100 miles public road, it does not have the resolute to argue with local government who set up random toll stations as revenue resource because it relied on local authorities's heavy hand to control unhappy citizens. One example, the central government's mouth piece, CCTV, revealed the express way which connects Beijing and its airport was only approved to toll one way traffic, which both direction had been tolled for years. The local authority continued to toll both ways after the central government vowed to crack down unlawful toll stations.

China's is riding on a bullet train with no brake, as many pointed out, after the Wenzhou train disaster. The sole power so far was the rapidly increased productivity, released from the confinement of tight government control. However, the rising communication cost has become a huge dragging force. The old question is when the train will run out of rail, while the political structure is only slowing down the speed new rail can be laid down.

It is Cisco Again

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, has accepted an appointment to be the counsel of international economics of the Chongqing Mayor.

In particular, Chambers will help Chongqing to build a cloud computing farm with international orientation. This farm will process data for foreign companies, one named company being HP. The cloud farm enjoys 'unfiltered' access to the Internet, with only occasional examinations of the data from the Chinese authority. The arrangement was approved by the central government in April 2011.

The 10 square kilometers farm is located in the Water-Earth Industrial Park of Beipei District of Chongqing.

Under Governor Bo Xilai, Chongqing has made itself the 'Red Capital' of communist China. The ultimate question for oversea companies who plan to take advantage of this 'cloud' will be whether they can assure data security to their customers.

Classics Faces Off GFW

Google's newly released Art Project joined millions others to be blocked by the communists' Great FireWall. The Google Art Project partnered with 17 top museums across the world to bring a surreal browsing experience to users in front of a computer, when they can view famous exhibits in the museum setting with unprecedented resolution. Each view is comprised of billions of pixels, or 1000 times more in detail then a consumer's digital camera. These paintings include master pieces by artists such as Van Gogh, and you would wonder what did Van Gogh did to deserve a ban in modern China.

The inspectors, or Net Cops as they are referred in China, had very unique and peculiar taste in making decisions regards which sites got blocked. For example, python.org, the main official portal for the Python programming language has been famously blocked for years. Do they not like the big snake logo? Or they were offended by Monty Python the show where the programming language got its name? Everyone is curious, but no one can tell.

Other websites blocked? Wikipedia, Youtube, Picasa, Pbase, Flickr, Twitter, ....

Happy Chinese New Year!

Dropbox Blocked in China

Dropbox, a popular online storage service had been blocked in mainland China. The IP of Dropbox.com has been blocked, and the word 'dropbox.com' has been blacklisted as of today.

Joining facebook, twitter, flickr, picasa, blogspot, wikipedia, Dropbox was finally recognized by the red regime as a most valued online service.

First Man-in-the-Middle-Attack on a Root Level DNS Server

The first ever man-in-the-middle-attack just took place on a root level DNS server, and of course, that would be in Beijing, China.

China had long been arguing that the top level DNS management must be de-centralized (to China, from the US) for varies reasons. They got one, and they used one.

ISP in US and Chile noticed when their customers tried to visit sites such as YouTube, Twitter or Facebook, they ended up at Chinese sites instead of the real ones. An investigation revealed that inquiries made to a root server in Beijing (one of 34 in the world) were intercepted and altered by the communists government's Great FireWall.

Chinese Prefer Direct Donate

Charities with Chinese background performed miserably in the latest round of Facebook Charity giving contest, a sharp contract to the glorious victory of last time, when Chinese charities claimed the top 2 slots, with 100 times more votes comparing to groups ranked tenthish. This time, the previous champion OCEF ranked 40, with 10 times less votes comparing to groups ranked tenish.

The difference? Last time people can participate by direct donation with a credit card on a regular website. This time people have to hold a Facebook account plus be a fan of 'Chase Community Giving'. In addition, no actual money is being donated by participants. The success of a charity's fundraising campaign will be evaluated by the number of votes they received, rather than money donation they received.

First of all, Facebook, among other web 2.0 websites, is blocked by the communist government. Chinese within the Great Firewall of China couldn't participate, even those English speaking elite working at international companies. But more critical was, Chinese people by and large don't like the idea of offering 'symbolic support'. Many Chinese people in the US don't bother to register a Facebook account; those who do have Facebook account don't bother to click to vote. And down to the bottom, there are simply not many Chinese representation in the total US population, where Facebook is popular. In the last round, participants can cast multiple votes by making multiple monetary donations. This time, each person can only vote for one organization once.

Anyway, there are still hours before the ending of the campaign. If you are a Chinese, or if you care about helping underprivileged people in China, please (register a Facebook account and become a fan of the 'Chase Community Giving' Cause, if you haven't done so) cast your vote for the following charities. Your vote could help them win the contest to be eligible to receive support from Chase.

Current Standing (Rank, Organization, Votes):

No. 1, ......, 98621;
No. 6, ......, 47489;
No. 32, 半边天基金会(Half the Sky), 8504;
No. 40, 海外中国教育基金会（OCEF）, 7054;
No. 47, 爱心传递慈善基金会(PLCF), 6259;
No. 50, 海外中国儿童援助基金会（OSCCF), 5740;
No. 61, 欣欣教育基金会(Shin Shin Educational Foundation), 3912;
No. 77, 海外华人互助会CMAIN, 2284;
No. 80, 手牵手教育基金会HBHEF, 2019
No. 84, China Care Foundation, 1724;
No. 87, 全美华人文化教育基金会(ACCEF) (致力于中国贫困地区教育), 1496;
No. 92, Chinatown Youth Initiatives, 817;
No. 100, ......, 611.

Each person can cast five votes. If you happened to reside behind the Great FireWall, this page tells you how to flip over the wall to vote.

Blacklist Whitelist

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the Communist Party announced on a conference held in Beijing on Dec 16, 2009 that the entire overseas Internet would be blocked. Instead of past practice of using a blacklist (on the list: Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, Wikipedia, Blogger, Twitter, to name a few) to filter out unhealthy information, a whitelist will be used to allow only selected sites going through the Great FireWall (GFW). Overseas websites must file a record to be white-listed.

The measure is hailed a critical step to protect our children from harmful information such as pornography and gambling, and to shield adult Internet surfers from junk EMails and computer viruses.

Should China Suspend Spending on Great Firewall (GFW)?

With help from US companies (Cisco, for example), the security ministry of China developed the most sophisticated and technical successful Great Firewall (GFW) project to block Chinese Netizens from obtaining and spreading information from the Net. Sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Picasa, Blogger are blocked, along with others.

In the past 10 years, a conservative estimate of the cost of the project is around $20B RMB ($6.5B). If considering the majority of Chinese people online didn't care about the outside world, then the cost on individual Netizen is an astonishing $30,769 RMB ($5,000) per capital.

If you are one of the Chinese who flipped the 'wall' to read this article, you should feel satisfied after knowing that the government had spent $5,000 on you.

The study was done by Li Huafang.

Computer Tune-Up Before Travelling to China

There is almost nothing you can't buy in China, except freedom.

One factor of the freedom is freedom to acquire information from the Internet. Depends on which gateway your ISP uses, you may experience different level of quarantine from the rest of the world. Some luxury hotels are allowed generous access to news sites such as CNN or NBC; while most residential customers are blocked to almost everything even remotely related to 'news'. Youtube, for example, has been blocked for months. Surprisingly, the most isolated browsers are found within ivy towers. Universities in China are connected by a so called 'Education Net'. Faculty and students alike will need to pay extra to pass a gateway of the Education Net to gain access to the Internet. However, even so, a much broader list of blocked sites are checked at the gateway of the Education Net. Many of the sites blocked by the Education Net are legitimate and dedicated for education purpose. For example, Conference Hub, a journal review site was blocked by the Education site, for no obvious reason. Also, HPC Wire, a long time news service in High Performance Computing, is also blocked by the Education Net, but not by regular residential services. It could either be the result of tighter control on college students, or a reflection of self-censor conducted by education officials.

Fortunately it is not difficult to make a break, and most Chinese students know how to do this. For foreign travelers, the key is to make preparation 'before' you enter China.

First of all, there are (at least) two levels of control over the Internet: Blocking (by a list) and Active Filtering (on dynamic contents). Websites such as YouTube, WordPress, SNS, Yahoo (Taiwan), Plurk, Blogger (including this blog) are blocked by a frequently updated list. From time to time, sites such as Google, wikipedia, New York Times are also placed on the list when necessary. Last week, the CCTV aired an interview with a college student who claimed to be a victim of Google. The student told the reporter a story of his roommate searched pornography stories on Google and masterbate in the dorm. Subsequently, Google China was suspended for a few days. Google agreed to cut regular 'Google' service to Chinese residents, and only provide an 'improved' service to China with dedicated servers located inside Chinese boarder (so that they could be closely monitored by the police).

In addition, any pages containing sensitive words are denied by the Great Fire Wall (part of the Golden Shield project). The Golden Shield works in both ways across gateways between mainland China and the rest of the world. When a user trying to access pages containing sensitive words across the boarder, the connection will be reset for a very short time with minimal impact of other functions. The technique is developped jointly Cisco on contract with the Chinese authorities.

It is not that Chinese Internet users had not put up a fight. April 2007, Shanghai resident Mr. Du Dongjin sued the China Telecom on terms of contraction violation for blocking realcix.com (why?). He lost in two courts. June 2008, Beijing resident Mr. Liu Xiaoyuan sued Suho for blocking his personal blog, the court refused to register the case.

For the rest of us, the most easy and straight forward way of breaking the blockage is by using tor, an application which can divert your traffic through a network of volunteer nodes (proxy). However, the Golden Shield monitors and blocks any reference to 'tor'. The official Tor Project site is blocked. Therefor, you are almost desperate once you get in China unprepared. So the key is to be prepared before you go.

For Windows user, you can download a 'tor' bundled with a browser on your USB drive. It's a portable 'green' application, which does not need to be installed to start.

For UNIX/Linux user, it's a little tricky. You need to install the required service components: tor/privoxy/squid. You also need to edit a few lines in the configuration file of privoxy. For most modern distrubutions, you can install them pre-compiled with system installation tools. A step-by-step instruction can be found here. Fortunately, this page is not blocked, yet.

An 8th grade student in Beijing Zheng Jiehan 'doggie' made a PowerPoint presentation on the Internet censorship in China.