With all the noise surrounding Google’s announcement last week that it may pull out of China, concerns over whether and how it’s possible to get unfettered internet access here have once again gone through the roof. With that in mind, we figured an update to the other forum threads on this topic might be rather helpful.

What’s the current status?

Most of the services recommended in our first forum thread about web proxies in China no longer work.

Mobile users of the Opera browser had unrestricted access for a while, but, as of November, that’s now gone too (for Chinese users at any rate).

Yet many of the web's most popular sites, including Youtube, Facebook, Blogspot and Twitter remain blocked. So too do many url shortening sites, such as bit.ly. A week or so ago, movie hub IMDB was added to the list. Nor is it just websites: even certain iPhone apps are deemed unwelcome.

For anyone not sure what they will and won’t be able to access when they’re here, Wikipedia maintain a list of blocked sites. The list isn’t complete – it doesn’t mention popular media site Danwei.org, for example, and Wikipedia itself is subject to partial censoring and occasional unavailability – but it’s useful if you're not used to the way the internet works here. (You can also practice in advance with an amusing Firefox add-on that replicates the experience of being behind the Great Firewall.)

So what to do?

Lateral thinking can sometimes help. As noted above, both Twitter and Danwei remain blocked. But it’s still possible to tune in to a user’s Twitter feed and read the text of Danwei stories by subscribing on RSS sites like Google Reader. Mobile/WAP versions of certain sites may also be accessible when the site proper is not. In the case of the above link to the Wikipedia article on blocked sites, that might mean looking instead to Wapedia. It may also pay to switch your loyalties –  in the world of url shortening, bit.ly may be out for the count, but ow.ly, kl.am and tinyurl.com all still work, for now.

If you’re only in China for a short time, proxies remain a viable option. By the time you finish reading this sentence the following statement will probably no longer be true, but for now at least www.vtunnel.com is still accessible. If it’s not, and if you have the patience, you should be able to find a working proxy on sites like http://proxy.org/ and www.azproxies.com/, though you may have to trawl through a lot of sites that don’t work first. Some aggregators specialize in proxies for particular sites, though don’t be fooled by the names: you can access more than just Twitter through www.twitterproxysites.com/.

Anyone here for longer, or desperate for a reliable way to get their daily Facebook fix, really ought to consider paying for VPN access. (Our previous post answered the all-too-common expat query: what's a VPN?) Of course, you could just make like the other 986,000 users and stop using Facebook altogether.

There’s no shortage of VPN providers worldwide, though three have proven particularly popular with foreign residents in China:

• Witopia (www.witopia.net) comes recommended by James Fallows, former China correspondent for The Atlantic.
• The Freedur (www.freedur.net) back-story is a bit messy, but the product nevertheless gets rave reviews for speed of access.
  
• Meanwhile, newcomer 12vpn (https://12vpn.com/) offers a Lite option for just US$25/year that may appeal to anyone on a tight budget (ShanghaiHalfpat readers can also avail themselves of a 5% discount).

This will now be the discussion thread for any questions, comments, updates and insights into climbing over, tunneling under, or just busting right through that GFW, so be sure to share if you have information that can help.