China Firewall Test See If Your Site is Blocked in China
Run a quick China Firewall test and see if your site is blocked or banned in China!
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Checking if Your Website is Blocked in China How Our Test Works
The entire country of China’s internet connectivity is shielded by the Great Firewall (GFW), or as it is known by its official title, the Golden Shield Project. There are just a few state-owned ISP providers that control the entirety of the Internet in China. All traffic between China and the rest of the world goes through a few national level and core-level access points located in different regions. Additionally, according to Statista, at the end of 2021, roughly 989 million people had access to the Internet in China.
The limited number access points and staggering number of Internet users, compounded with the fact that internet traffic is controlled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, creates performance bottlenecks for users inside and outside of China, when trying to access specific websites from inside and outside of the country. Companies in the Western world have a major tradeoff to consider when getting involved with China, especially where censoring speech and content is considered.
If you are looking to expand your presence in China and want to know how your website looks to users in China, or just simply want to check to see if your site, or elements of your site, are functioning and available from multiple locations within China, you can run our Great Firewall of China test to find out how your website currently looks from behind the GFW.
- Enter your website URL.
- The Great Firewall of China test from Dotcom-Tools allows you to see what your site looks like from the following 6 locations within mainland China: Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenzhen.
- Select your browser type (desktop/mobile) and resolution and network settings.
- Select the Run Test button to begin the test.
Select to test from your choice of desktop and mobile browsers, including Chrome, Edge, and iOS, as well as specific device screen resolutions and network throttling options.
Once the test has finished, you can review performance reports and waterfall charts for further analysis and element-by-element performance detail.
Why Is My Website Banned in China?
Automate Testing Behind the China Firewall
How to Make Your Site Accessible from
Behind the Chinese Firewall
Despite China’s best efforts to surveil, block, and censor the Internet, there are still a few different tricks and methods to circumvent the GFW.
Use a VPN
One of the most common ways is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
A VPN service allows you to protect your privacy and data by encrypting your data and routing your connection through a VPN server. The destination sees your data as coming from the VPN server, not your actual location.
Site-to-Site VPN
Like a regular VPN, companies with offices abroad have been using what is known as site-to-site VPN.
A bit different than your regular client-based VPN, site-to-site VPN’s allows offices to connect to each other over a public network, removing the need to have each computer run separate VPN software. In January/February of 2018, China took steps to “clean up” the Internet by blocking access to the TCP ports that are used to carry that HTTP traffic, notifying businesses that they must re-register or apply with their local ISPs if they need to retain access to those ports.
The Chinese government, in theory, could block all VPN’s, however, it’s believed that they need to allow access to VPNs for domestic businesses. There are many different VPN vendors that you can review, however, the Chinese government is constantly making changes to their policies, so any of those options could be shut down at any time. For companies doing business in China, having access to VPN services is critical to their survival. If China were to completely remove access to VPN’s, it could ultimately impact whether they remain in business.
Direct Access
China’s government allows you to access the Internet abroad, however, the caveat is that you must use their dedicated line.
This poses a couple of problems, especially for smaller businesses. First, the cost. The setup fee for a dedicated line has been reported to cost between $600-$700. And then the ongoing monthly fee can be up to $3,000. Secondly, security is a huge concern. Businesses must consider what information they are sending in and out of China and if it’s being monitored.
Miscellaneous Options
Other less common methods include staying at locations that route their traffic to/from servers outside of China.
For example, some travelers have reported unfiltered access at certain hotel chains in China. Additionally, some phone plans offer international roaming services, but depending on how much you plan to use your phone, the fees could add up quickly. Another option is Google’s Project Fi. Their plan recently added 4G service via their Chinese partner, Unicom. Project Fi users have reported being able to access sites that are normally blocked with no issues.
Chinese Firewall FAQ
The Chinese government maintains firm control over what content is accessible from within the country, frequently filtering out content so that it is inaccessible, as well as throttling bandwidth to certain sites so elements eventually time out. These filtering rules are not public and are altered regularly, dramatically affecting your monitoring results. Unfortunately, in these cases, there is little you can do since the Chinese government is in control of the network. Here is a list of frequently asked questions about the Great Firewall of China.
There are many websites that are banned in China, including some of the Alexa top-ranked sites, like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, and thousands more. While it is possible that sometimes sites become temporarily unblocked, depending on a user's location or if they are using a VPN, etc., it is typically available for only a limited time before it is blocked again.
Yes, VPNs can be a good method of circumventing the Great Firewall of China. However, just know that at some point the server of the VPN provider you use may get blocked, or temporarily blocked, by China. It is always a good idea to research which VPN is the best option for your needs.
Unfortunately, the Great Firewall of China is showing no signs of slowing down its censorship. If your website is hosted outside of China, there is no guarantee that your site, or elements of your site, won’t be censored. One way to help ensure your website isn’t banned by the GFW is to apply to get an ICP (Internet Content Provider) license which would allow your website to be hosted on servers within China. However, the rules for applying for an ICP license are quite restrictive and the fee is quite expensive depending on the license (well over $100k for Commercial licenses). For most businesses, the fee alone is a barrier to entry.
Alternatively, you could set up your site from a CDN from a nearby country, like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, or Thailand. From a performance perspective, this setup is not as reliable as having your website hosted in China, but if your website is not as complex, and is simply hosting relatively static content, this might be the way to go.
Regardless of where your website is hosted, one way to ensure uptime and availability is to set up continuous synthetic monitoring. As we have discussed, the Great Firewall of China is notoriously unreliable. The Dotcom-Monitor platform provides website administrators the ability to be notified when sites become unavailable or when performance thresholds are not being met. The platform provides users to set up 24/7 checks from locations behind the Great Firewall of China, and other locations around the world, to ensure availability, uptime, and optimal performance. The sooner you are notified of an error, the sooner your teams can work on a solution to get your site back up and running.
To no one’s surprise, there is no official list or database provided by the Chinese government as to which specific domains are blocked, however, there are activist sites, like GreatFire.org, or community-based encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, that provide information about the domains that have been censored. Even though they may not provide complete, up-to-date information, they can be a great resource to quickly see what domains are blocked.
As a user, a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a cost-effective method you can implement to bypass the Great Firewall of China. A VPN encrypts your connection to a server in another country, disguising your IP address, making you appear that that you are in that country. If you are traveling to China, it is recommended that you install your VPN prior to entering China, as it is much harder to access VPN providers in-country.
While it may seem like almost all the popular sites that you probably access daily would most likely be blocked in China, there are some well-known sites that are not blocked. Sites like Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype, and Zoom are all available. Bing, for example, is available, but in some cases search results may be censored. Sites that are related to business or financial institutions are typically not blocked. For example, banking companies are not blocked by China. However, as we discussed above, any of that could change at any time. In fact, Yahoo is an example where it was blocked years ago, but is currently not blocked by China.
Aside from banning sites that contain obscene or pornographic content, the GFW also suppresses any topics or sites related to western news media, social media, freedom of speech or pro-democracy, as well as anything related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, for example. As you can imagine, that makes up a large portion of websites in the United States. While the list is constantly changing, for a list of sites that are blocked by the Great Firewall of China, you can visit GreatFire.org or Wikipedia. However, to see if your website, or a different website, is blocked by the China Firewall, you can run our test for instant, real-time results.
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