Althouse: "Don't know what you said, Ann, but you pissed someone off. Maybe Xi and Li like to wear shorts."

May 19, 2014

"Don't know what you said, Ann, but you pissed someone off. Maybe Xi and Li like to wear shorts."

"You were blocked by the Great Firewall of China and as a result I had to go two weeks without Althouse. I am back in the states and happily reading through everything I missed now."

Email from a reader with the subject line "I missed you in China."

10 comments:

Douglas B. Levene said...: Ann is blocked in China because all access to blogspot.com is blocked by the Great Chinese Firewall. Unless, of course, you are using a VPN, as I am right now.; 5/19/14, 5:28 PM
Nichevo said...: That is odd. Althouse has never opposed evil at any time and is no threat to the Gong Fei. Maybe they don't like her commenters?; 5/19/14, 5:41 PM
madAsHell said...: Well.....I don't want to diminish your proudly-subversive moment, but I'll guess that all blogspot.com websites are blocked. Especially, if they allow comments.; 5/19/14, 5:48 PM
Ann Althouse said...: The Jill Abramson commencement speech -- linked in a different post today -- has her talking about the NYT being inaccessible from China.

I wouldn't travel anywhere I couldn't blog from. But I also wouldn't travel anywhere I couldn't breathe.; 5/19/14, 5:54 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Why would Althouse be blocked in China?

Maybe because not a week passes where some commenter doesn't talk about "The 100 million deaths under Marxist regimes in the 20th century".

The censors in China aren't so stupid that they don't know that they're included in that list as the worst in a long list of malefactors.; 5/19/14, 6:42 PM
traditionalguy said...: They don't fear the Althouse Blog. What the Chicoms fear is the Constitution of the United States and all experts in its use.

In fact they probably most fear the parts that Justice Stevens and Harry Reid wants to see expunged from it.; 5/19/14, 6:54 PM
TerriW said...: "I missed you in China."

Sounds like one of your emails from Barack Obama.; 5/19/14, 8:39 PM
Douglas B. Levene said...: Ann,

Almost all expats (and many Chinese) in China use VPNs (virtual private networks) to jump over the Great Firewall. They cost $5-10/month, although I think my students have found much cheaper ones. Using a VPN tricks the Great Firewall into thinking that you are logging on overseas instead of in China, and gives you unlimited access to the world wide web, with no censorship. That said, if you are accessing English-language websites from inside China your download/upload speeds will be much slower than you are used to in the States; this is true whether or not you are using a VPN. If you are going online in China to Chinese websites, the internet speeds are typically very, very fast.

It's unclear whether the use of VPNs is legal under Chinese law. I've never heard of anyone being arrested for using one, but the Party's online hackers do attempt to disrupt various VPNs from time to time. My impression is that the Party does not mind foreigners in China doing their thing, and it does not mind the elite having access to uncensored foreign news, it just wants to keep the masses ignorant.

Finally, the air in China varies. Beijing and Shanghai can be quite awful. By contrast, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are more like Los Angeles in the days before the Clean Air Act - on some days, lots of automotive smog captured by inversions, on other days, relatively clear. There are no coal-fired plants in Guandong Province, just a couple of nukes, which helps a lot.; 5/19/14, 8:42 PM
Sam L. said...: Yannow, there was this great old song back in the '60's, We Wear Short Shorts.; 5/19/14, 10:46 PM
Clark said...: I am able to access Althouse in China via 3G just not wifi. Drives the accountants nuts because of the data rates, but this is Althouse we're talking about...can't be cheap about these things.; 5/20/14, 3:33 PM