Facebook users dodge Great Firewall of China

The Great Firewall of China has helped the government block websites from the Falun Gong to Twitter for years in the world’s most censored internet market. He Xin recently discovered how to bypass the restrictions.

“I climbed over the wall,” said He, an electrical technology major at China’s Yanshan University in Qinhuangdao. “Very few of my classmates and friends can climb over the wall, so I can’t add them as friends on Facebook yet.”

He uses UltraReach Internet’s free Ultrasurf, one of the growing number of so-called Virtual Private Network services used in the world’s biggest internet market to circumvent censors. Facebook users in China, blocked in the country since 2009, have more than doubled in the past month to exceed 700,000 after CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited the country, according to data compiled by Socialbakers.com, a site dedicated to analysing Facebook statistics.