Friday, March 23, 2018

Thank God for American Internet

After a week in China, I am so happy to have made it back to Seattle. Connectivity was okay at my hotel in Shanghai, however I was down to using my Iphone in Tianjin and Beijing. The Chinese Government has been trying to crackdown on VPN usage so their citizens can not see youtube, google, facebook, etc and it seems to be working.

Bloomberg China VPN
VPN Update
"A certain amount of commercial VPN traffic is allowed as well, because the government knows that many foreign visitors and investors need to access blocked websites and blocking VPNs completely would be very bad for the economy and foreign investment. During sensitive political meetings or other sensitive times, VPNs will be partially blocked or speed-throttled, but they will never be completely blocked.

You will notice that during these times of political meetings or events that the companies which have Chinese language websites and market their products to Chinese people will be hit the hardest by the blocking.

The VPN providers that don't target Chinese customers are left alone to a certain extent. It's not a matter of these VPN companies outsmarting the government censors, but rather the government censors carefully controlling the level of blocking. They could completely block any single VPN provider tomorrow if they really wanted to. "
Hopefully it was just a matter of timing and next time will be better.


On the other hand, their construction business is booming as usual.  This picture was taken on the East side of Tianjian.  How many cranes can you count?  I think I see 13 very large buildings being constructed simultaneous in that one shot...  It is just impossible to believe unless you see it.




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