How did they get off the ground - I am about to relocate to Shanghai - and it would appear that there is no-one who admits to be in Shanghai registered???
Can this site even be accessed from China? I was under the impression that China severely restricts overseas news sites, chat rooms, porn sites, etc. Friggin’ commies.
I had no problem reading pro-Taiwan and Taiwanese government material from Shanghai, and reading Taiwanese newspapers every day to boot. There were 130,000 Taiwanese in Shanghai when I was there…
Interesting observation - try looking at Tibet friendly sites from China - ))))))
As far as I know, http://www.oriented.com is not a discussion forum or a bulletin board, therefore it is probably not banned.
I was under the impression that the www in China is actually less than “world-wide”. Remember the kafuffle when Bush went to Shanghai a while back? The foreign reporters were pissed because not all of them could access their organizations’ respective websites because they were banned. The authorities were shamed into opening up the system, but as soon as Bush left, they tightened it right back up.
I would love it if we had mainland Chinese posters here. I talked to some students in Beijing on ICQ during the time of the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. I expected the jingoistic nationalism, but I was surprised at how uninformed of world events in general they really were.
I find it very hard to believe foreign reporters could not get full internet access.
My firm’s telephones and internet were provided by Bell Atlantic down a direct, specially laid cable from Hong Kong and our firm’s wide area network (and therefore internet) was part of that. We shared our lines with the British and Canadian Consulates, and Reuters. The downside of having your own personal cable laid is that telephone charges are outrageous. Nothing to stop the CCP monitoring the line, of course.
If you’re in an internet cafe, that’s another thing. You’re dependent on the local ISP, which for one thing, will not have uncensored Usenet replicating servers.
Anyone in China can get full internet access anyway by dialling an ISP abroad. If “China Telecom” blocks that ISP number, you just ring a friend in Hong Kong who diverts all his incoming calls to that ISP. The government knows that, and generally leaves foreign companies and residents alone, because if they block their lines, that’s exactly what they’ll do (and used to do). However, if you’re Chinese and you’ve got that kind of money, the government knows you’re not likely to rock the boat, and will pretty much let you do as you please.
I was there during Clinton’s visit, and indeed he was staying in the hotel complex where I worked. After a hard day we used to swap stories over a pint of Guinness in in The Long Bar. I told him what a pain in the arse his visit was as I suddenly could no longer get my weekly fix of pirate VCDs for US$4 a pop, but to never mind as all would be back to normal as soon as he left.
the reporters needed to file stories from the conference center in Shanghai where the meetings were. So they were reliant on the interent connections in the building, no personal lines.