China’s Internet censors are at it again according to reports filtering in over the Christmas holidays that the country blocked access to Google’s Gmail service beginning December 26. Dyn Research, a Web traffic research organization, reported that Gmail is not accessible to most Chinese Internet users. This follows months of disruptions with Gmail in China.

It appears that Chinese officials are trying to minimize Google’s presence in the country. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Google’s Gmail and other services were blocked in China earlier this year in June.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google spokesman Taj Meadows said on December 29, “There’s nothing wrong on our end.”

Why the latest interruption? Some suggest that Google’s decision in 2010 to stop censoring its Internet results in China being blamed for the long-running feud. Others say the interruptions coincide with pro-democracy events in China.

Blocked websites in China

In the past, China’s “Great Firewall” has blocked some well-known websites, including Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and LinkedIn. Some of these sites still remain banned today.

And some of “the biggest blocks so far” by Chinese officials, according to Tech in Asia, include:

• Social media sites: Twitter, Hootsuite, Instagram and TalkBox
• Newspapers and media: New York Times, Bloomberg, YouTube, Vimeo, Wikileaks and Dailymotion
• Search engines: Google, Baidu Japan and Brazil, and Yahoo Taiwan and Hong Kong
• Work and productivity: Dropbox, Google Docs, Google Gmail, iStockPhoto, Google Translate and Slideshare
• Online Tools: Flickr, Google Play, Feedburner, Bit.ly, 4Shared and change.org

According to a Wikipedia listing of “high-ranking websites blocked in mainland China,” Google services comprise the top 10 blocked sites, including Gmail, Google’s search engine, Google Maps, Google Docs and Google Drive.

GreatFire.org’s latest stats reveal the top web domains, sites and searches blocked in China as:

Monitoring 1017 Alexa Top 1000 Domains:              164 are blocked in China

Monitoring 30351 Domains:                                       4478 are blocked in China

Monitoring 13627 Google Searches:                          13563 are blocked in China

Monitoring 696 Google Sites:                                     597 are blocked in China

Monitoring 11026 HTTPS:                                         2374 are blocked in China

Monitoring 15285 IP Addresses:                                5723 are blocked in China

Monitoring 155632 URLs:                                         47422 are blocked in China

Monitoring 20937 Weibo Searches:                            16 are blocked in China

Monitoring 1053 Wikipedia Pages:                            273 are blocked in China

China also blocks its fair share of apps. Apps experiencing service interruptions of late have included Line, KakaoTalk and Viber.

Is your favorite site blocked in China?

Internet users can visit the following Websites to see if a specific website is blocked:

• http://www.blockedinchina.net/
• https://en.greatfire.org/ (click on test URL)
• http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall/
• http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html

Typing in the website facebook.com at blockedinchina.net yielded the following results:

Instructions on how to circumvent China’s web restriction

Because China does not block encrypted web traffic, if you are in that country and want to circumvent its web restrictions, you can use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service or proxy server that serves China, including https://www.expressvpn.com/, https://vpn.ac/ and https://getsetupfile.com/. For the best VPN protocols to use, check out this greycoder.com article.

Mellisa Tolentino contributed to this article

photo credit: hunxue-er via photopin cc