Email in China

[time]

I think a couple of people here have spent some time in China, so I'm hoping for some insight.

In most situations, The Great Firewall of China now blocks email hosted by Google (eg Gmail). We still have some service with a roaming phone, but imap.googlemail.com etc are no longer functional.

Of course, there is no reliable information whatsoever on what works and what doesn't.

Longer term residents typically use VPNs, but it has to be one that is not targeted. In the case of my client, they visit sporadically, so each time is another throw of the dice.

It is difficult to switch the staff to a different email provider just for the duration of the trip because I can't see a way to resync afterwards. And they have massive email stores that couldn't be copied across easily. And I have no idea if the alternative provider might also be blocked next time.

Like I said, any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Stereodude]

I found a pretty good amount of the the western internet to be non-functional in China. Simply because so many websites use scripts from Google, facebook, and the like.

To your specific question, I didn't try to use gmail while I've been in China. My work e-mail was not gmail based, but was "cloud" hosted by Microsoft and worked okay. Basically, I think you're SOL. I've seen some people claim that western hotels have unfiltered internet, but I didn't personally encounter that. My current employer uses gmail for the corporate e-mail and the folks in the China office use VPN.

 

[sechs]

Isn't the government only targeting VPN services?

If the client ran their own VPN, I suspect that everything would be fine. Certainly worth researching.