Bypassing the Great Firewall of China

For me China is a land of opportunities and freedom. I have to admit that it’s not the communist country I had imagined prior to coming here. In fact the only signs of communism I’ve seen and felt myself are propaganda in the media and the Net-nanny blocking our favorite websites like myspace, wiki, blogspot, etc. I usually don’t care too much about them, but yesterday’s events made me write this guide. Yes, on the 17th of October, 2007, China blocked youtube. And even though there are a lot of webproxies like www.oddproxy.com that help bypass the ban, it’s a pain in the ass to use them on a daily basis.

The easiest solution is TOR, it works together with your firefox browser and is just one click away via the TOR button. Since some people have been having troubles getting it to work, here’s a quick how-to guide:

1. Get Mozilla Firefox from the Mozilla Site
Firefox in my opinion is the most advanced and easy to use browser ever, and even though you can get TOR to work with IE, but it requires more effort. Personally I don’t know anyone who uses IE, so this guide will be Firefox oriented.

2. Get Tor Vidalia Privoxy Bundle from the

TOR Website (Windows)

TOR Website (Mac OS X 10.4)

TOR Website (Mac OS X 10.3)

This is the crucial step! You have to install this Bundle for the TOR button to function, otherwise you’ll just get a “The proxy server is refusing connections” message. The installation of this package is pretty straightforward. Make sure you install all three parts TOR, Vidalia and Privoxy.

 

Install TOR

 

Once the package is installed, restart your computer and TOR should start automatically as a background service.

3. Get the TOR button firefox plug-in from the Mozilla Site
If you got TOR running successfully, install the TOR button plug-in, restart your Firefox browser, and the button should appear in the bottom right corner of your browser window.

Tor Button

Click on the red “Tor Disabled” sign, and you’ll be connected to the TOR network.And that’s about it, it’s as simple as that. Now you’re ready to browse www.youtube.com or any other blocked sites with no restrictions. Enjoy!

Note that TOR relayed connection will be slower, especially if you have just turned it on. It takes a while for TOR to relay your traffic through multiple proxies, but once the connections are established the speed will improve.
If you still experience difficulties while trying to get it to work, let me know and I’ll try to help you out the best I can.

By ckone • Oct 19th, 2007 • Category: China Survival Guide

ckone is A guy stuck in Crazy China and loving it!
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14 Responses »

  1. tmt on October 19th, 2007 at 9:57 pm:

    it’s working! i’m so happy! thank you — it’s brilliant.

  2. Shopgirl on October 21st, 2007 at 1:57 am:

    this is awesome, i will share this on my blog. thanks

  3. Dani on October 21st, 2007 at 1:05 pm:

    There is another website you could also use:
    http://www.anonymouse.org

    It´s slow, but you don´t need to install anything.

    Thanks for the tip!!

  4. Dani on October 21st, 2007 at 2:07 pm:

    That´s so cool, man!!

    Thanks a lot!! You have just changed my life :) :)

  5. Lui on October 23rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm:

    Does this work for macs?? If not are there any webproxys that are mac compatible?
    Much appreciated, youtube is the final straw for me.

  6. ckone on October 23rd, 2007 at 7:39 pm:

    Yeah it does work for macs. For step 2 you just need to get the Tor Bundle for mac computers, the rest is all the same. I added the link for macs on my post.

  7. Benjamin on October 25th, 2007 at 1:01 pm:

    I didn’t get how you said it would get faster? It’s hella slow now.

  8. beachhutman on October 26th, 2007 at 10:25 pm:

    Hey that’s excellent! A hell of a lot better than reading blogs through the dialectizer! ( http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect )

  9. Elizabeth on October 29th, 2007 at 7:42 pm:

    I cannot get the TOR application to work. I installed it and have the little onion on the bottom right of my screen as well as a “P” in a blue circle. It gives me the same message as before, “The server at http://www.youtube.com is taking too long to respond,” which is the same message i got before I installed TOR. Can anyone help?

  10. ckone on October 30th, 2007 at 11:57 am:

    @Benjamin: If it’s really slow you can try right-clicking the little green onion at the bottom of your screen and selecting “New Identity” option. It should then connect to different proxies.

    @Elizabeth: Is the little onion green? Did you activate the Tor Button in your Firefox browser? If so, can you access any other site like google.com with Tor Enabled?

  11. Aaron on February 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm:

    I am unable to establish a connection, and I’ve followed all the directions. What could have went wrong?

  12. ckone on February 23rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm:

    could you be a little more specific, what error messages are you getting? what color is the little tor icon in the taskbar?

  13. Dumpling on February 24th, 2008 at 8:25 am:

    Sweet. Thanks a lot!

  14. In Your Face Internet Censorship on February 24th, 2008 at 8:43 am:

    […] http://www.iaminchina.com/2007/10/19/bypassing-the-great-firewall-of-china/ […]

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