China just gave two of their companies a monopoly on internet telephony by making it illegal to use anyone else's service for that. One effect is that skype is now illegal there, so far as I can tell. They have quite the tendency to block out foreign products and make people use Chinese versions there. (ex: yes, facebook, twitter, and youtube are all blocked in China, but there are Chinese equivalents that aren't blocked for all of them. Google recently got out of China under pressure, and Baidu, the Chinese equivalent, has essentially no competition anymore.) So, China has a lot of protectionist policies, and it seems to like cutting itself off from the world some. It's kind of annoying, since I study Chinese, have been there three times, and will be going again for a year. And, you know, this blog is based on google stuff? Blogspot is a google product. So I'll have to sharpen my getting to blocked sites skills, I suspect. I can understand what they're trying to do- they want to help their economy, and they want to keep people on sites they can censor themselves if need be. Also, this is China. China has a history of isolating itself. Not news. But it's still annoying.
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