It’s that time of the year again, our partner/advertiser Freedur is offering a big promotion and we are giving away free subscriptions again! Hope those of you who won last time have enjoyed the giveaway.

If you are in China right now and need VPN software to access Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc… or for some reason you just want to surf the internet anonymously or want to bypass SOME KIND OF FIREWALL, we are giving away 10 one year subscriptions of Freedur 2.1 VPN software for free! It will allow you to do all of that. And they are valued at 59.95 USD each!  Check the review we posted for Freedur awhile back.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Freedur VPN subscription giveaway!’

From Zhangshuyue’s blog:

The inside information of Facebook to enter China came in mid-April 2010, said that the earliest will be within three months. Then followed by a Chinese headhunter company said that Facebook already commissioned them to recruit the relevant General Manager in China, mainly in charge of the gaming business. On the surface, according to various sources Facebook is really going to enter China. These speculations on the king of the SNS industry created heated discussions all over the world. Netizens are especially curious about which Chinese name Facebook will use. Should it be “Lianpu” (脸谱) (types of facial makeup in Chinese operas), or slightly pictophoneic characters “Mianshu” (面熟) (first character means face, second character is a homophonic pun of the Chinese character “book” and it means familiar, together familiar face), or should it just follow what Google did phonetically translate the name to “Feisibuke” (“非死不可”) a very inauspicious term which means “must die”? But more importantly, now this temporary name seems to suggest the bleak future of Facebook entering China.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Facebook, “Must Die” (in China)’

Jan, 21, 2010: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gives a speech on Internet freedom at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

(If you cannot see YouTube videos in China, try use VPN software : Freedur,  and use coupon code CHINAHUSH to get 10% off. )

How did Chinese government respond to this speech?

From Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China:

Q: In her speech on internet freedom on January 21, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on China’s internet policy, accusing China of restricting internet freedom. How do you comment?

» » » » Continue reading ‘A Chinese Netizen’s open letter to U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’

We just ended the Freedur VPN giveaway drawing, and the winners were announced here today. Thank you all for participating in the drawing! If you didn’t win, here is the good news, also good news for those of you in China. There is a new way for you to browse the internet freely and it is FREE! Introducing PAPER BUS a Free proxy service brought you by Open Terrace Ltd the same company that made Freedur.

PAPERBUS has just been released today! January 21, 2010

Kudos PAPER BUS! In my opinion this is by far the best free proxy service there is right now. My experiences with the free proxy services out there are usually unpleasant. They are usually very slow; and do not load AJAX or java script heavy sites. Most of them do not support HTTPS connections and the application itself is usually bloated with ads.

I am using PAPER BUS right now and it is pretty fast, easy to use and seamless. The only down side is there will be an ad web browser tab popping up in every twenty minutes while you are using it. (Although the current version on the website doesn’t even nag you with the ad page at all, I am using 1.0.3b) Hey after all it is free! One open webpage tab every 20 minutes is not so bad, that’s how they were able to make this a free service. Just make sure to close your browser or turn off PAPER BUS when you are away from your computer.

It’s simple, download it here and use it to bypass the Great Fire Wall, access blocked sites etc. etc. It’s FREE!

For those of you that are in China right now and need VPN software to access Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, (soon Google?) etc… or for some reason you just want to surf the internet anonymously or want to bypass SOME KIND OF FIREWALL, we are giving away 10 six month subscriptions of Freedur 2.1 VPN software for free! It will allow you to do all of that. And they are valued at 39.95 USD each!

To Participate in the drawing, all you have to do is retweet this link with #ChinaHush in the message. (Remember #ChinaHush, with #) 10 lucky winners will be randomly selected in one week, at midnight of January 21, 2009.

Freedur 2.1 was just released, it is now a full VPN application instead of a proxy. Check out the review we posted for the last version Freedur 2.0.

The drawing is over, And the winners are…

@neo2049 confirmed
@ditchwitch27 confirmed
@changshanotes confirmed
@weelingsoh confirmed
@stinson confirmed
@islash confirmed
@numberss confirmed
@beijingdaze confirmed
@WildPixels confirmed
@nuochan confirmed

Congratulations! The next step is to email me chinahush[at]gmail.com with the email address which you want the account to be setup to.  If you DON’T email me in a week, another winner will be selected! Thank you all for participate in the drawing!

And remember, even if you don’t win, the coupon code CHINAHUSH still works for Freedur 2.1, enter the coupon code CHINAHUSH and you will receive an additional 10% discount when purchasing it!

I picked these two articles because they showed two completely different views on the Google China situation in China. First one is a blog post written by KESO (洪波) a well-known IT blogger in China.  (I have translated one of is blog posts back when Kai-fu Lee resigned from Google China.) The latter one is an article from one of the Chinese media site: People’s daily, written by a netizen named Jiang Bojing (姜伯静).  Compare them for yourself…

Google to withdraw from China

By well-known IT blogger: KESO

Google officially announced that they will no longer review and censor search results on google.cn and they will have discussions with the Chinese government in the next few weeks. How can Google.cn operate legally under the premise of not providing filtered searches? If they cannot achieve these, Google will consider closing Google.cn, even all of its China offices.

To Google, this is a difficult decision. To me, this is a painful choice. Most of my life online depend on Google. I use Google to search, Gmail to send emails, Google Reader to read many of my subscribed contents, Google Docs for managing all my office documents and Picasa for processing photos and even marking their geo-locations… All of these, there is no third party application can replace Google. Not to mention that there are large numbers of Chinese enterprises, such as Alibaba, need to rely on Google’s search and advertising for their global business.

» » » » Continue reading ‘More Chinese opinions on Google leaving China (Keso vs. People’s Daily)’

Just 2 days ago CC sent me a link to a Chinese blog post about how he noticed his personal emails from Gmail account was accessed and screened by GFW. I was skeptical and thought it could just be a hoax or hype or just a theory. And today, the news broke out. Google officially announced that they will no longer provide censored searches for Google.cn because they faced cyber attacks originated from China which targeted Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists! This could mean end of the road for Google in China.

As part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

My jaw dropped as I read the statement from Google. This is exactly what the blog I read 2 days ago tries to prove.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Gmail security breach, want some proof?’

How would you like to live in a world without facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr etc. What would you do if I tell you starting from tomorrow you are not allowed to access these sites anymore? As many of you probably already know, this is actually a reality in China – a country which has the highest number of internet users. Due to censorship policy in China, especially Internet Censorship, as for now, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr etc. are all blocked by the GFW – Great Firewall of China.

One of the easiest methods allowing you to get over the “wall” and access these blocked sites, browsing the internet freely and anonymously is to use a VPN software like Freedur. Freedur 2.0 the latest version is available for download. Freedur cost $59.99 for one year of subscribtion. But here is something for ChinaHush readers, for limited time, if you enter the coupon code CHINAHUSH, you will receive an additional 10% discount!

» » » » Continue reading ‘Freedom On the Internet’

This viral video is called “One Obscene Man” (一猥琐男), first appeared on Tudou on June 28 2009.    According to Netease forum post, netizen who first uploaded the original video added some explanations briefly described the story. He/she also added “this short video is dedicated to those students who have climbed the wall in order to access the internet. Hope you have not experienced similar things.”  The “wall” here is referring to the GFW – Great Firewall of China which is implemented by Chinese government in order to achieve Internet censorship.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Viral Video: One Unfortunate Man Climbing the Wall’

Most people already know the issues on Censorship in China. Especially Internet Censorship, as for now, Twitter, YouTube, facebook and flickr etc. are all blocked in China. Netizens spend numerous times on techniques on how to get over the “Great Firewall of China”. This is an ongoing topic being discussed to death. Many blogs are dedicated for this issue, dedicated to show people how to “climb over the wall”.  So you can probably find plenty information on this if you want to know more about it.  Today, I came across these 2 blog posts talked about censorship vs. innovation.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Censorship vs. Innovation in China’