Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Chinese Internet Censorship

When I first got here, I was really confused but super thrilled that my phone could still connect, albeit incredibly slowly, to Facebook, Snapchat, google, etc. At the time, I was using my American SIM card and my teeny tiny international data plan. It appears that combination of the American iPhone with a non-restricted SIM card creates a sort of invisibility cloak from the Chinese government. But then I ran out of data (WAY too expensive) and had to get a Guangzhou SIM card and now I no longer have access to the following:

-Facebook
-Twitter
-Snapchat
-Searching through Safari (Yahoo is ok)
-Google/ Google Chrome
-My Blog
-Google Maps
-Instagram
-Youtube            
-And, for reasons I will never understand, Myslice. (The Syracuse University enrollment site)

So, if you’re traveling to mainland China and want to have access to these things, you’d better be prepared to pay about $50 per day, because that’s how insanely expensive American international data plans are.

Note: Hypothetically, you should be able to get a SIM card in a city like HK that will also work in mainland China (and hopefully bring some free internet with it), but it didn’t work for my phone, which is why I had to switch to my American card, and ultimately the Guangzhou card.

I was told that I wouldn’t be able to look some things up on the internet, but I just used Internet Explorer (ugh) to find the Wikipedia page about the Cultural Revolution and had no issues.

So, the lack of social media is incredibly and increasingly tough with each passing day, especially because all the notifications still come through, you just can’t follow them. I guess this is the real test of whether or not I can handle being cut off from Facebook, Instagram, et al…but it’s only for one more week.

The youth of China have a different solution. They’ve all figured out how to access these sites via VPN, so most of them are effectively working with unrestricted internet. And so far, it appears that the government doesn’t really care enough to do much about it.

Oh, and one last note: Although the restrictions are frustrating, there are a ton of movie streaming sites here that aren’t blocked at all J