The China Teaching Web

During the Olympics, reporters had some issues with the amount of censorship they were subjected to when using the internet.

Has this loosened up a bit since then, or are you still subjected to censroship if contacting people outside of China?

How difficult is it to share information with your family members who live the USA?

I don't think that the government has any interest in reading email. At one school in China, I had good reason to believe that students working in the school  IT department were playing around with the foreign teachers' accounts. They did it, I believe, just to do it. The school always told us that the Internet provider was responsible, but rather than sending a rep from the service provider, it was always a student from the school. It was little more than mischief. They'd get into the computer, forget the password, and then  they'd have to come to the FT's apartment to reset the password. I don't have proof of this, but when I opened my email many times, mail which I had not even seen before had been marked as having been read.

If you're REALLY worried about your email being read, do the following:

1. DO NOT allow your computer to remember your password.

2. Open a Hush Mail account, and be sure that anyone with whom you correspond uses Hush Mail. (It is encrypted on the account holder's end only). Use it at least once per month, or the account will lapse and you'll have to reestablish new accounts with everyone.

One thing which the government itself has said itself is that it is concerned with text messaging. None of my international SMS messasges have gotten through to its intended recipients. They are most likely being blocked rather than intercepted and read.