I never seem to get much in the way of emails or comments from people saying they are currently in China. A long-time reader reports that he couldn't access my website on his recent trip there. So, am I banned in China or can you read me in China?
P.S. Physicist Steve Hsu points out there are ways of tunneling through the Great Firewall using an encrypted proxy server.
P.S. Physicist Steve Hsu points out there are ways of tunneling through the Great Firewall using an encrypted proxy server.
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81 comments:
Looks like the answer is yes.
I am from China and I can read your blog. More likely you really don't have that many readers.
All blogspot.com sites are banned in China, yours not excepted.
Yes you are. Just spent two months there.
Well if you want to know what's going on there and what Chinese commenters say, http://www.chinasmack.com/ will give you translated vox populi.
(Re: chinasmack - well I guess it's mostly trash but, maybe one semi-substantial thing per page)
ALL Blogspot blogs are banned in China.
Did you really think some commisar went through the trouble of putting you on the list?
I think blogspot is banned in China, not you alone.
The Chinese government doesen't like anyone who says that Americans should make their own goods and stop buying Chinese. They should relax, though, because even if all Americans stopped purchasing from them, China will STILL become the dominant power in the second half of this century. China: a monstrous unstoppable devastating force of Nature.
I have never been able to access your site when I travel in China (which is often). It may not be personal; it may be related to blog sites: I generally have trouble accessing anything on blogspot or wordpress when in China. The authorities have probably decided that there is enough objectionable political content on those blog sites to justify blocking them wholesale even if there is a good deal of innocuous content.
It's because you're using Blogger.
China has issues with Google.
But then you're already banned in your own country, Steve, never mind China! It is my understanding yours is a Hate Page, or whatever they call it, and as such is blocked at work, public libraries, etc.
Looks like the question is why.
When I was there 5 years ago, everything blogspot was banned.
To be fair, you do show marked counter-revolutionary tendencies, at least you weren't sentenced to "remoulding". :o)
Gu was an accountancy expert in his youth, joining the underground Communist Party in Shanghai in the late 1930s, and later appointed to leading roles in the post-Liberation Shanghai tax administration. However, having given outspoken and unwelcome advice to senior cadres, he was in 1952 charged with counter-revolutionary tendencies, demoted and sentenced to "remoulding."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu_Zhun
Blogspot is banned, all of it
all of blogspot is banned in china
http://techie-buzz.com/tips-and-tricks/access-blogspot-blogs-china.html
I think all of blogspot is blocked over there.
FWIW, I can you access your site here in Tunisia!
This site says you are blocked:
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
Test results
Website Test Results
Tested From: Guangzhou, China
Tested At: 2010-10-24
09:32:47 (GMT -04:00)
URL Tested: http://isteve.blogspot.com/
Resolved As: 72.14.203.132
Status: Failure in receiving network data
Response Time: 5.566 sec
DNS: 2.565 sec
Connect: 0.200 sec
Redirect: 0.000 sec
First Byte: 0.000 sec
Last Byte: 2.801 sec
Size: 0 bytes
Tested From: Munich, Germany
Tested At: 2010-10-24
09:32:47 (GMT -04:00)
URL Tested: http://isteve.blogspot.com/
Resolved As: 74.125.39.132
Status: OK
Response Time: 0.262 sec
DNS: 0.021 sec
Connect: 0.010 sec
Redirect: 0.000 sec
First Byte: 0.160 sec
Last Byte: 0.071 sec
Size: 293954 bytes
If the US keeps heading in the direction it has been, in a couple of more years you'll be banned here too...
Hey, Steve, when I was staying in Guangdong province one year back, using free wireless from a neighbor, I could not see any "blogspot" site period. I take it that would be a blog with this company about anything, be it conservative or left-wing (of course, I had no reason to read a left-wing site).
I was surprised what sites I COULD read though: gunowners.org, etc., no problem. Also, I'm pretty sure I couldn't read any of the blogspot sites from the internet cafe either.
Keep in mind, this was a year ago - I doubt it changed for the better - someone decided long ago that "blogspot" was not too cool.
I will get someone in Guangdong province to check for you shortly; stand by a day or so.
I'm pretty sure the blogspot domain in its entirety is restricted to some extent in China.
Here, let me Google that for you.
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
Looks like yer blocked.
blogspot, wordpress, youtube, facebook, twitter are blocked in china.
My guess is that Chinese readers don't enjoy Steve whining about Asians gaming the UC admissions system or such other tomfoolery.
Mel Torme said..."(of course, I had no reason to read a left-wing site)."
Of course you do. If I can read the NYT and The Grauniad every single day, then so can you. Or doesn't the phrase "know the enemy" convey anything to you at all?
You should be forced to listen to "The Christmas Song" in a continuous loop until you see the error of your ways. I'm guessing in less than a day, you'd be begging to read the archived articles of Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Madeleine Bunting, Charlie Brooker, et al.
"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."
Interestingly enough, Blogger is blocked in all of the China except Hong Kong. So it seems it still retains a lot of independence including ideological matters.
"China: a monstrous unstoppable devastating force of Nature."
That's what was said about Japan, which rose equally fast. Something tells me a bump on the road to world hegemony awaits China -- you know, like involvement in foreign wars or a domestic uprising. In retrospect, it's clear that all human systems are chaotic, even for ethnic groups with seemingly insect like predictability.
Hi Steve,
The above comments are correct. When I lived in China, all blogspot domains were blocked as a matter of course. This was relatively easy to get around by using a proxy server, which I did regularly to read a number of blogs, including yours.
Best,
David
Yep, my source in the East checked 2 hrs. back. No blogspot (I'm not a 14 year old girl, so I didn't care about twitter and facebook).
Vdare.com
GunOwners.org
load OK.
Most third world dictatorships block blogspot, you can't get it in the Middle East unless you are reading through google reader or another proxy.
Bruce Banner, I have not had a problem loading isteve or VDare at the public library until the one day they asked me to use the kiddie computer as all others were taken. I guess this stuff is too scary for the kiddies that can read it.
"I am from China and I can read your blog. More likely you really don't have that many readers." Goupi, fake Chinaman! (unless you are in Hong Kong or Taiwan which is NOT China, but a separate country. ha, ha, f__k you, too). When you become a real Chinaman, write back with some juicy confucian advice.
Steve, I was able to access your site in Chung King and Lo Mein but couldn't in Wang Chung, Kung Fu, Kung Pow, and Fried Rice.
Dan in DC
isteve is blocked by my Virgin Active gym here in London, England.
I can read you in Thailand but almost anything with Thai sluts in the title is banned!
Off-topic, but may I assume that later this evening, we'll be getting a chance to comment on Murray's latest?
Thanks in advance.
Well, at least Steve is MADE IN AMERICA.
When I was in China back in June I could not access blogspot sites at all from any where (although those in the know claim that you can get around the fire wall, seems like it is secret Chinese knowledge).
Then we went to Hong Kong and regained access, but when we went back to Guanzhou we lost access to Blogspot etc ...
I am from China and I can read your blog. More likely you really don't have that many readers.
Trans.
I am a disgruntled SWPL liberal and I don't like your blog.
It is my understanding yours is a Hate Page, or whatever they call it, and as such is blocked at work, public libraries, etc.
I wonder if I also receive this laudable distinction.
They can't be allowed to get away with this!
Everyone join me in boycotting Mu Shu Pork for the full month of November.
Albertosaurus
Steve, I'm curious what you think about last night's UFC fight (mma has basically replaced boxing for those under 35). Cain Velasquez crushed Brock Lesnar. Velasquez enters the ring to traditional Mexican mariachi music and sports a giant "Brown Pride" tattoo across his chest. Overall he markets himself as the champion of Mexico.
You probably won't be surprised to learn that he was born in California and raised in Arizona. Two time all-american wrestler for ASU as well.
China is a good market to reach with HBD. They're not as politically correct and they realize that Northeast Asians are more intelligent than roundeyes. If you could mirror your posts on some other China-accessible website and do some posts about the Chinese people/history you might get a Chinese audience.
I just got back from a year teaching English in China, and I could never get on your blog; it's clearly blocked. The Chinese authorities aren't too keen on bloggers in general, so there's nothing personal about it.
Well Steve, I am also banned in China so you have company.
Steve, I was in Rome last summer. You were blocked on the Sheraton EUR (south Rome)WIFI.
Could it be that blogspot in banned in China? This is one case where the time lag in comments created a ludicrous situation.
"I am from China and I can read your blog. More likely you really don't have that many readers."
I'm in China and you are definitely banned, but not until you went to blogspot.
However, some educational institutions or int'l companies have different set-ups that might allow them to access certain blogs that I can't at home. This is legal. Otherwise, you have to use proxy servers like www.hidefap.com, as I am doing now.
Anybody else from China have other good proxy servers. Hidefap is no intermittently banned, as well.
By the way, Steve, you can't access your site using the proxy server www.proxywolf.com. Seems you are banned on that proxy server as well.
Do you really think you're so special that a powerful national government governing over a billion people singled you out for censorship?
It's time to go back to isteve.com!
I used the Steel Phoenix tool and found out that although http://isteve.blogspot.com/ is blocked, Vdare.com and Amren.com are not. So I don't think the Chinese government objects to his commentary per se, since a lot of his blog stuff gets reproduced on Vdare.
If you are blocked in China that is really a shame. There are a lot of intelligent Chinese that would love your site.
There are ways around the Great Firewall of China. However, English literacy in China isn't all that widespread - the average Chinese schoolkid gets abysmal English instruction and has the same attitude towards English as someone stateside might have towards Spanish. The result? Much lower levels of English proficiency than even Korea or Japan.
Blogger.com is blocked in mainland China.
Singapore gateway has access.
Sherwood Smith
Shenzhen, PRC
Steve, I met you last year at the Mencken Club.
Yes Blogger is blocked in Mainland China.
I read from work as we have a Singapore gateway out of China. Not sure how it works, but my home internet, regular work internet cannot access facebook, youtube, or blogger.
Best Regards,
Sherwood Smith
LongGang, Shenzhen, PRC
Wordpress is not blocked in mainland China just slow to load.
Sherwood Smith
South China
But you are not blocked in South Korea!
In China, one would need at the least a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and a proxy server to read censored stuff, but it is possible. However, China is building / has built a virtual "Chinese wall" around its internet, so that a lot of stuff simply never gets through the few access points into the country in the first place. The more things change...
If you care to have a better chance to get through to China, buy your own innocuous domain name, it's easy enough with blogger (as a middleman only), and it costs just ten bucks a year.
A more general comment to people who surf in China: don't do any sensitive stuff online like bank transfers, credit card transactions, etc. Nothing is fundamentally secure! And change your passwords when you come back home. I have an email account that I use only in China.
The real question is, is pterodactyl masculinity banned in China?
If I am banned there, I shall personally fly over and poop on all Comissars' cars!
More seriously: if it matters, perhaps there's a way to automatically mirror your site to another domain (not blogspot) which isn't banned there?
tc said:
blogspot, wordpress, youtube, facebook, twitter are blocked in china.
I just got back from a long trip all over to Asia (and yes I noticed that isteve was blocked in Beijing). While there, I noticed that the twenty-first century definition of "Asian Communist Government" has nothing to do with "the means of production" - the new definition (PRC, Vietnam, North Korea I imagine too) is, do they block Facebook.
I am Lugash.
Like others have said, everything Google is behind the Great Firewall. Cracks do appear from time to time though.
I am Lugash.
As everyone said, blogger is blocked in China. I'm in China right now, however, and using a VPN I have no problem at all. I just accessed isteve.com after shutting off the VPN. So no, you're not banned.
Is this possibly the work of our friend "Pissed Off Chinaman"?!
Just kidding man - we know your cool and we all like you :)
Err... I have been in china for a year and read this blog almost everyday. Why is everyone saying blogspot is banned? I also use wordpress and fb
> It is my understanding yours is a Hate Page, or whatever they call it, and as such is blocked at work, public libraries, etc.<
It is never blocked at our public libraries here, nor at any workplace of mine. (I'm at work right now!)
"P.S. Physicist Steve Hsu points out there are ways of tunneling through the Great Firewall using an encrypted proxy server."
Well, if you weren't then, you are now!
>Am I banned in China?<
Who isn't? Even *I* am banned in China.
Whatever for I have no idea.
I am living in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
Your site is blocked. However, I can access the daily entries using the Google Reader. I am using a VPN now to enter this comment. But normally I can't be bothered to leave Google Reader to do so.
I am living in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. I can get your blog entries via RSS.
I an making this comment now because I have my VPN turned on, for as others have said blogspot is blocked in China
Major sectors of the Chinese academic community and of the political leadership are fascinated by, not offended by, the issues of sociobiology, race (e.g., John Randall Baker ), the American dilemma/Jensenism. I would wager that your blog is read widely "where it counts" and that it is imprudent for your Chinese readership to be in direct Internet contact with you at this time. I wonder if among the huge number of PRC students on American campuses, there would not be quite sufficient talent and shared interest to "buffer" the sort of mainland Chinese feedback you would welcome and thus bring it prudently but indirectly to you??.
Yes, but you're big in Japan.
Hey, btw. You are filtered by the irs as a phising or fraud site. I had been able to access your site for the last two years on my work computer. No longer.
"Steve, I was able to access your site in Chung King and Lo Mein but couldn't in Wang Chung, Kung Fu, Kung Pow, and Fried Rice.
Dan in DC"
Dan, that was about the funniest comment I've read on any site in years! I've never written "LOL" before either, but, I LOLLED like a teenage girl (felt pretty damn good too ;-)
.... now if I could learn to twitter while my girlfriend is googling me, that might feel even better.
now if I could learn to twitter while my girlfriend is googling me, that might feel even better.
You filthy beast!
@Anonymous
You cannot compare China to Japan. Apples and oranges. China has LITERALLY ten times the population of Japan and the Han Chinese are even more intelligent and just as industrious as the Japanese.
And speaking of Japan, a country of only 120 million people achieved 70% of America's GDP back in 1990 and almost destroyed the ENTIRE American manufacturing base - except for aviation where the Japanese didn't compete at. If a tiny country of 120 million accomplished that, then imagine a continental nation with a population 10 times larger and even smarter than Japanese.
China will bury the U.S. Napoleon once remarked that the World would tremble when China awakens, and the Corsican was right. China is THE superpower of history. It was the World's superpower 4,500 years ago and it will be once again, ok. I rank the ancient Romans and the Hellenes as superior to Anglo-Saxons - after all the Romans enslaved the Angles and the Saxons and the Romans were living in cities of marble and gold whils the Angles and Saxons picked lices out of each other's hair like monkeys in their flea-infested villages - and yet the Roman Empire at it's zenith of power couldn't compete with Han China at anything. Even as late as the 18th Century, China was still superior to England at almost everything. Only in the 19th Century did the English finally surpass the Chinese and the discrepancy only became pronounced in the 20th Cventury. The Ancient Hellenes, the Califate empires of the Middle Ages, the
Carolingian Empire and also the Bizantine Empire, not one of them could match China at anything, so why do Anglos have the arrogance of thinking they are better than the Chinese even though they have only been more advanced than the Chinese for the past 160 years or so and China is destined to have a GDP larger than the U.S AND Europe in only another 50 years or so?
Is this possibly the work of our friend "Pissed Off Chinaman"?!
Just kidding man - we know your cool and we all like you :)
Wow and I was trying so hard to be disliked and uncool with my left wing egalitarian beliefs :)
Seriously though I am actually banned in China, and I don't mean my blog either (as I do not have one).
Who zat other David?
China's billions are mostly countryside peasants. The top men are commies or controlled by commies. The technology (including missile tech) was stolen from the West. China is a paper tiger holding a lot of American paper. We laugh at you. HA. HA. HA.
@David
Japan was a nation of peasants back in 1880 and 100 years latter was almost destroying the entire American economy. South Korea was a nation of peasants back in the 1950's and today it has one of the World's ten largest economies despite it's tiny size. Your point is? As for stealing missile tech, Americans are the greatest stealers of all times, bro. Americans got their missile tech from German scientists brought to the U.S under Project Paperclip and most of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were European. Even to this day, the greatest number of American patents are made by foreigners working at American universities and not by U.S.A citizens.
"..China was superior to England until the 1800s..."
Better at what? Binding the feet of a 5 year into something resembling a ginger root? It took an invasion of influence from the west and from Japan for them to stop that. Funny--the Japanese got a rep for cruelty in China during 30s, yet they passed laws against footbinding in the early 20th century in areas of China where they ruled.
Oh well, we did the corset thing, but at least that was to adults.
Their superiority? Give me a blow by blow. You might have a point--I just can't see it.
Superior in what way? What were they doing? What would they be doing now if they'd never met any Europeans? The Europeans were technologically superior to anywhere else in the world as early as the 1500s and they were only a few million. The Chinese are now a billion. While no doubt many quite smart people are among them, sheer numbers, and qualities of self-control, account for a lot of their success, not great genius.
While I am no Semitophile, I am personally more impressed by Jewish success, because it is a case of so few doing so much, as is the case of Europeans on a larger scale.
"Western" (code for "white") civ has a record for achievement so extraordinary even its own members don't really comprehend it. Hence the readiness to give away all the credit for anything desirable and take the blame for anything bad.
"Even to this day, the greatest number of American patents are made by foreigners working at American universities and not by U.S.A citizens."
Errrr....if the foreigners are so great and Americans so lame, how come is it that it's *American* universities, (universities originally founded by Americans of Euro descent, originally taught in by American Ph.D.s, originally built and equipped by Americans, paid for by American taxpayers, and *intended* for American kids) that the world's inventors cross oceans to get into?
Seems to me, if what you are implying is true, that it oughta be the foreigners' own countries with the to-die-for schools, with the Americans trying to get in.
But that's not what we see.
So, seems to me, it's just as reasonable, or more, to assume that these foreigners are taking spots AWAY from Americans with ideas, and so that's why it's foreigners applying for "American" patents.
Which, the whole argument that we need foreigners and their patents (acquired while working in American-built and American-funded labs) to "maintain our competitive edge on the world stage" is just laughable, anyhow, since the new industries from these patents get offshored, anyway. And, besides, EAs do industrial-sized military and industrial espionage on us.
Hello Steve,
I spent several months in Wuhu, China this year, and had to wait until I was on the company VPN to read iSteve
You Steve are not banned in any active way, but rather blog sites in general are banned. So if you moved your content to your own site (like Pournelle's Chaos Manor) rather than using blogger.com it would be no problem.
The great firewall just don't like blogs.
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