I am in China right now. I just tried to Google Bloomberg and my connection was stopped.

I can not connect to bloomberg.com. I can not read this BBC article.

Reply here and I'll test whatever you want me to.

Append https to the BBC article to read it behind the GFW. The https hack sometimes works when the government is blocking content on individual cites vs. complete sites.

I think they have cracked some parts of https. If you make a prior to a non blocked page in https and then go to a block page sometimes it works. If you make your first https connection to a block page it is blocked. Maybe this is due to the way https works. I haven't looked into it.

Google uses https and they still managed to monitor all the traffic and block keywords.

There is a good reason why it is stated change your passwords before you come to China and after you leave.

interesting.. It works with HTTPS, but the certificate is not the original BBC one.

Just notice that too. If I get some time next week I'll look into it.

Princelings are a big problem; I'm glad Bloomberg followed the trail on Xi Jinping (China's apparent next president).

But really, the censors are way behind on this. All of the middle class knows this is how China works (political power = money) while the rural class doesn't care. So where do we go from here? Those in power hardly want to change a system that benefits themselves so greatly, and the system will continue to become more dynastic (certain families accumulating lots of power and wealth).

Bloomberg is going to be out for awhile I guess. But check out the Streisand effect going on, the visibility that the meta story is getting is much more than the original got!

The block was first put into effect some time the night of the 27th-28th[1]. It was then lifted, so it may have been a test. The story was published at 3:32am EST / 7:32am UTC on Friday the 29th and the block was put into place soon afterwards.

[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230364950457749...

I can personally attest that bloomberg is inaccessible from China Telecom at least in my region.

It'd be curious to know if they also blocked Bloomberg Professional. I'd venture they didn't, given that that would block important information from the financial (gov't) elites.

They did not. Their firewall blocks Internet access to the websites only.

The Great Firewall messes with more connections than just websites. They are definitely are doing something to SSH connections. Every time I ssh to my server it gets bombed with faulty requests. (This was discussed on hacker news before.) They actually seemed to have slowed down this practice recently.

The world is much more tolerant of China as they don't have a hidden agenda like Russia had. Their only agenda is the economic advancement of China and the stability of it's government.

"Their only agenda is the economic advancement of China and the stability of it's government."

I disagree: Their geopolitical agenda includes unification plus securing rights to natural resources under the South China Sea. Hillary and the US Navy have made it clear that the US will not be tolerant of a bully in the South China Sea. Also, stability of the government is not important, only stability of the party.

Their agenda is economic advancement, your point is indicative of that.

The party would serve no (meaningful) purpose if it lost it's ability to govern, so stability of government is equally important.

Economic Reformation completely transformed the government, causing it to be a shadow of its former self by killing millions of jobs at government owned companies. The party survived and subsequently thrived. Chinese unification is a centuries-old goal wholly unrelated to economic development.

I recommend reading Richard McGregor's The Party for a good introduction on the forces at play in modern China.

The BBC is dumbing down, that stock photo caption "Some Chinese web users try to find a way round the restrictions" is staggeringly inane.

Has some irony to it, they are playing a game on the picture.

Indeed, he's playing Starcraft. I don't think he's trying very hard to use dat proxy.