文章标题：为什么我不能访问Facebook
記事タイトル：僕はFacebookにアクセスできない、なぜ？

Miss Eimi ASANO(Japanese: 浅野 瑛美), one of my Japanese friends, who has been in China over one year for studying, asked me whether I can view her latest photos on Facebook via QQ last week. But I told her that I can’t access this site in China. At first, she seemed unbelieving, at last, she was so disappointed when I definitely told her that is true.

Actually, many foreigners have the same feeling when they first came to China, that is why I can’t access some popular websites, for example Facebook, Twitter and YouTube etc. It’s difficult and complex to explain the reasons, but you know, the main reason is still political sensitivity. That means those websites may include many harmful information for authorities.

So, the authorities set up the Great Firewall of China, called the GFW for short, to block the content by preventing IP Address from being routed through and consisted of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet gateways.

Although some people can fly over the GFW and access the blocked western sites via special methods including VPN, SSH or IPv6, most netizens still can not enjoy the services.

“How would they feel? So depressed?” you may ask. The results, however, beyond your exception. Many Chinese IT companies provided the same service, and people can also share the fun, excitement, and benefits from those local social network services.

Here is a short list of the Chinese equivalents some of the blocked social network services.

This is not a definitive list but it is representative of the market. It’s no doubt that many of the above companies grew at faster pace and have benefited from the removal of the competition from the overseas while their western counterparts were blocked.