China Is Already Blocking Google+

I think the main reason that Western Social Networks are blocked in China is, to give Chinese web companies time to grow a Chinese rip-off version of the Western site. Looking forward to "百度圆圈" (Baidu Yuanquan) or Sina加一 or similar.<p>In Google's case its probably also to get back at them for having said the truth too many times.

I'm in Beijing right now, using otherwise-filtered internet. I can't access Youtube or Facebook or Twitter, but I can access Google Plus without any noticeable slowdown. Everything feels pretty responsive.<p>Maybe the filters just haven't gotten to me yet?

I find it silly that China blocks Google+, but not 4chan.<p>(<a href="http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=4chan.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=4chan....</a>)

I read HN from google reader. And it tells me that someone had just liked this news.<p>The freedom of China's intranet needs to be fought for by its own people. But how could anyone `like' current situation like this?

I reckon China is blocking foreign social networking sites for economic reasons rather than anything else. They have a market that everyone else wants to tap into. So why let others in when they can "innovate" internally and provide a made-in-China alternative.

Have they purposefully gone and blocked google plus, or do they simply block *.google.com and have an exception list?

It seems that an obvious attack against the Chinese filtering system would be fooling it into blacklisting a huge number of neutral sites - I mean the good old poisoning with fake keywords technique. Yet I haven't heard about anyone trying this approach.

Has anyone with a startup that wanted China as a potential growth opportunity ever try and address this problem? The only reasonable solution I can think of, is having family in high places lobby for you. Thoughts?