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"It's not really about censorship... and about keeping the lower classes from organizing and causing trouble."

That sounds like censorship to me.

Well, yes, the GFW provides censorship but that's a part of the government's greater goal of pacification of the population. The post's point is pretty clear as it elaborates that the upper classes in society are not likely to care since they have a better life, and know how things really are.

> 1. Never use Google Maps in China; Google Maps in China are just hilariously wrong and out of date and will get you lost. Even if Google Maps wasn't blocked you wouldn't want use it in China. Apple Maps is the best English language solution, it's accurate and up to date; that or Baidu Maps if you read Chinese.

I'm an Android user. I just spent 10 weeks in Shanghai from early October to mid December. I can read some amount of Chinese but simply not enough to use Baidu Maps for all my navigation needs.

I found Google Maps (via Express VPN) to be perfectly fine in Shanghai. The public transportation suggestions and times were completely off, but locating a given address (my main use case in Shanghai) and using walking directions was never an issue.

In Shanghai you use Uber/Didi Kuaidi/Taxi or the Metro as opposed to driving yourself. As long as you can use Google Maps to look up the Pinyin spelling of the next major intersection so that you can pronounce that to a Taxi driver you are good to go. :)

Interestingly enough when roaming for free on T-Mobile (at 2G speeds) I was able to access Google Maps and most foreign internet services without the need of a VPN.

I'm an Apple user so I'm not very familiar with the offerings on Android. I don't drive. Apple Maps has all the public transport info so that's key to me for any map. Plus, in Suzhou where I live, I've found much of Google Maps to ridiculously out of date. It's gotten me lost many times before I switch to Apple Maps. Now when I go for a trip abroad I switch back to Google Maps and when I get home I switch back to Apple Maps.

> Interestingly enough when roaming for free on T-Mobile (at 2G speeds) I was able to access Google Maps and most foreign internet services without the need of a VPN.

Yup, if you are roaming on another a foreign provider you will rare have any troubles. Not sure why, but that's always been the case.

Never made it to Suzhou so I can't tell you how I would have fared there. However in Yunnan province (Dali, Lijiang, Kunming) I didn't have too many problems with Google Maps either.

I would have loved to use Baidu Maps all the time if there were a Pinyin mode. When I first installed the app I was shocked by the permissions it requested, but on stock Android I didn't really have a choice.

I do think international iPhone users generally have it easier in China.

Let's see what happens this year (or next) with Google resuming some operations in China (saw some job openings focused on Ads in Shanghai and Beijing).

> Finally I find it a bit odd that someone so concerned with privacy uses so many Google Apps. Isn't that rather counter productive?

There's another angle to it that I think is more important to many - not having access to Google apps you're used to is fucking annoying, to say the least. Bing is nowhere near good enough or convenient enough to replace Google for search and translations (and DDG is blocked). If, like me, you use GMail and Facebook as primary means of communications, then GFW basically cuts you out from family and friends.

> Also, only web based gmail is blocked. Access from Mail.app or iPhone's Mail is not blocked. Sadly translate has been blocked for about a year now... all the more reason to never turn the VPN on your computer or phone off.

GMail for Android (and Inbox by Google) are somewhat blocked. So is the Facebook app and Facebook Messenger app. I had periods late at night when my phone would suddenly download a few e-mails or receive FB notifications, but the "connection" lasted something like 30 seconds.

RE censorship, GFW is already effective enough, even if it's a side effect. See:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/f1/beware_trivial_inconveniences/

> There's another angle to it that I think is more important to many - not having access to Google apps you're used to is fucking annoying, to say the least.

For some Google Services there are annoying but functional workarounds, for others.. not so much:

My Galaxy S6 fingerprint scanner acted up and locked me out of my phone. I didn't really remember the backup password (I was too clever by making it very unique - somehow forgetting to put it into Lastpass). I thought - no problem, I can use the Google Account password reset mechanism that I used before, right? Wrong! When you are locked out you can't change WiFi networks either, so connected to an Astrill router or corporate network that is on a VPN wouldn't have been an option. So the only option was a factory reset. Turns out that a US Galaxy S6 immediately tries to phone home to some servers blocked by the GFW during the reset process. You can't skip that step! So this is where I had to find some folks with an Astrill VPN router and connect to their private WiFi network that was tunneled to the outside world.

Lesson learned: Know your backup passwords and don't rely on fingerprint scanner functionality.

> Finally I find it a bit odd that someone so concerned with privacy uses so many Google Apps. Isn't that rather counter productive?

There's a fairly big difference between having a company consolidate your personal information and a country willing to throw you in a hole for thinking certain thoughts.

Any good map solution for Android? I used Baidu Maps a bit but it was painful because I don't read Chinese. Everything else I tried (Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps) was terrible; searches couldn't find some of my hotels; directions couldn't give me subway instructions. I had to revert to using paper/PDF maps most of the time which was annoying.

"The OP is missing the point of the GFW"

Perhaps I did not explain myself well. What confuses me is why does the GFW goes to great lengths to very effectively block some VPN solutions (such as an SSH SOCKS tunnel), while it lets other VPNs operate (such as ExpressVPN). Or maybe this is a question I answered already at the end of the post: they can monitor ExpressVPN but not SSH, so they block the latter.

"Finally I find it a bit odd that someone so concerned with privacy uses so many Google Apps."

Simple: I am an ex-Google employee (Security & Privacy Engineering). I saw from the inside how serious and obsessed they are about privacy and protecting people's data, and this made me trust Google more than ever.

How about maps.me? http://maps.me/

Due to the map issues. Uber drivers always call you to ask where you are. Which is a huge issue if you don't speak Chinese. Uber is powered by Baidu map data in China.

No, access to any form of gmail is blocked. I just came back from Shanghai, my personal gmail on my phone was never able to retrieve mail, and even my work's corp. gmail was also unable to connect. However your mileage may vary. This was in Shanghai connecting to various wifis and using my sim's (China Telecom) data plan.

However you can use this to bypass the GFW. free vpn app: fastcat

Initially gives you 50MB, I think if you register and check-in every so often you can get more free data to use.

I live in Suzhou. And use gmail via Mail.app and iOS Mail daily. Other than around certain anniversaries, it's never been blocked for me. I do visit SH regularly -- it's right beside me -- and haven't had trouble. But YMMV. The GFW might just like me.

I wonder if it might be because I'm using Google's Apps for Business (i.e., our own domain). In my experience the GFW is much more lenient if it thinks what you're doing is work related.

> It's mainly about providing a market for local tech startups and about keeping the lower classes from organizing and causing trouble.

Actually it's the other way around. It's built by Chinese companies as well as Cisco, Nokia-Siemens making a huge profit from Chinese security funding. GFW's funding is >$10B USD. The protectionism is the side product.

1. If you don't mind Chinese maps, Amap.com is also a good solution, listed on the Google Play store if you plan ahead to download. You are in China, use some Chinese maps! Translate / dictionary is helpful. Amap has many place names in English as well (Banks, airports).

Amap is also where Apple is getting some of its Chinese data from.

Using Baidu Maps worked fine for me for public transportation directions / walking directions. Often I could search for a location in English or Pinyin as well.

It only gets tricky when you want to take a taxi. Sure - you could show the address to a driver, but I found that to be very awkward and it didn't always result in success.

So my major problem with using Baidu Maps is the fact that I cannot view addresses or locations in Pinyin. If I knew the characters I could pronounce it :)