Internet censorship in Shanghai universities (in general)

[Aleksei]

Dear students and PhD-students of Shanghai-city universities,

 

I plan to pursue my PhD in Shanghai, but I have read that in China almost all international web search engines are restricted or forbidden by federal laws. I don't imagine how to study, to obtain scientific information (and all useful for future thesis), to maintain social links with european, russian and latin-american friends, relatives, former supervisors and colleagues, and to live there (in general) without access to Google, Facebook, Hotmail, Wikipedia, mail.live.com, yandex.ru, mail.ru, Youtube, Skype. Does anyone know something about censorship in internet in Shanghai and China? May I take my own laptop to China? How to survive without e-mailing to motherland, without economical and political news of Europe and other western regions of the world?

 

Sincerely Yours

[ChTTay]

Most people get and use a VPN. They can sometimes be patchy but work mostly. It's a bit of a cat and mouse game between GFW and VPN companies.

[anonymoose]

Of course you can still communicate by email internationally. The only restriction may be on whether you can access your email service in China - in other words, don't use gmail. You could, for example, open a QQ account. That's what I did, and set up automatic forwarding form my gmail account so I could still receive anything sent to me.

Also, Chinese Wikipedia is blocked, but the English version is still accessible.

Anyway, as the previous poster mentioned, you can use a VPN to circumvent the restrictions. Whether that will continue to be possible in the future is a question.

[Simon_CH]

Dear Aleksei 

 

You are right, it's almost impossible to do serious research and access important sources without access to these sites (and many more). For that reason I seriously suggest you get a good (paid) VPN before you come to China. 

 

You can bring your own notebook/smartphone to China without any problems. 

[Angelina]

Definitely, get a VPN. Use your institutional email instead of gmail or similar services that might get banned anytime. Google was not banned until recently, now, even though you can use a VPN, you can't rely on a gmail account.

The most interesting thing I have found was that while The New York Times has their website banned in China, I have full access to it at the university library and public libraries.

You will have access to JSTOR and similar. You can also use the local CALIS and CASHL. You will need to use a VPN for Google Scholar.

[bientai]

Any recommendations for (good) VPNs and how do these things work?

[ChTTay]

"Anyway, as the previous poster mentioned..."

I have a name!!!!

:-)

[anonymoose]

What is it?

[skylee]

I plan to pursue my PhD in Shanghai, but I have read that in China almost all international web search engines are restricted or forbidden by federal laws.

I guess "federal" laws do not exist in Mainland China? It is not a federation.

[ChTTay]

ChTTay

?

[Aleksei]

OK, I meant: "forbidden by any actual chinese state or local laws, in general". I might have made a mistake when I used the word "federal", thus, don't pay attention.    

[Angelina]

Are from Russia Aleksei?

Maybe you are used to the term federation in Russian, so you said it now without thinking, even though you know China is not a federation.

[Aleksei]

Angelina,

Yes, I'm from Russia. Where are you from?

The point is that I'm not interested in political system of China, I'm interested in my future PhD and censorship in Shanghai. The essence here is in prohibitions and restrictions and how to broaden our possibilities of internet usage.

[tallcity]

Also depends which school. When I attended ECNU in Shanghai, internet was not censored in the NYU building on campus.