As a foreigner living in China, inconvenience comes as part of the package, especially regarding the internet. Without paying for a VPN to surf the web in Mainland, you’ll notice that the internet just feels different, major and minor. A major difference is that some websites are completely inaccessible. A slightly more subtle difference is that social-sharing functions are embedded all over websites these days and with some of them being blocked outright, webpages tend to have some broken links. Here are a few major websites that weren’t able to climb over the Great Firewall of China
Most expats will find this to be more than an inconvenience. Because many of us are so connected to each other through social networks services, Facebook arguably the most popular amongst them, you may feel like a there’s a void left in your life. China’s government is pretty keen on controlling the masses and “protecting” them from any harmful material. And these days, with news breaking faster on an SNS like Facebook with positive and negative reactions that follow, it only seems logical for the CPC to quarantine a website like Facebook to maintain balance in the realm of public opinion. If Facebook is your main method of staying in touch with friends and family, then China will not be a friendly place for you.
Alternatives: Skype, E-mail, Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, Renren
I personally don’t have a Twitter account but I’m well aware that this is the other SNS titan that can cause major problems in the Chinese media department. With tweets from famous and regular people becoming instantly posted on a user’s feed, this can be very difficult for the government to control, especially if a scandal were to break out. Therefore the simple solution is to block it outright. Fortunately, micro-blogging has gained massive popularity and China offers domestic Twitter-clones, such as Sina Weibo. In fact, many non-Chinese celebrities have Weibo accounts to further reach the Chinese population. There are some drawbacks though, as these websites are all in Chinese and can be exhausting to read or translate. Also sensitive subjects should be handled with caution, if mentioned at all.
Alternatives: Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo
Youtube
I’m not sure why a video-sharing site would be blocked here. Perhaps it’s because Youtube is owned by Google, but since 2009, the world’s most popular video-sharing platform has been blacked out in China. This is a big problem for me because Youtube has always been a useful site to waste time and watch hilarious clips. Youtube’s blockage is an interesting case however. Without access to funny clips of internet sensations, Chinese video-sharing sites offer a major consolation prize: full episodes and seasons of TV shows. Provided that your IP address is a Chinese one, you can watch great quality streams of many of popular American TV series without paying a fee on Hulu (which you also can’t access anyway).
Alternatives: Youku, Tudou, Funshion
Google Drive
The struggle continues between Google and the PRC because anything launched by Google is abruptly blocked here. Google Docs, a cloud-based collaboration tool that allows user’s to share and maintain documents is apparently a threat to harmony in Mainland China. A more probable reason is to prevent Google from thriving in China and snatch up some market share. Google Drive’s blockage clears the way for domestic products like Baidu’s Wangpan, which offers 5 times the storage space of Drive’s basic offering with 15 GB. If the Chinese clone does not interest you, there are other English alternatives that offer the same basic cloud storage function.
Alternatives: Wangpan, Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive, Box.net
Koombah 