For the last few weeks I have noticed basically all Western sites being inaccessible for many minutes and then even hours, while at the same time Chinese-based websites are still working and coming up really quickly, as usual.

Also the VPN service I'm using (StrongVPN) has been very shaky.

And just now both Skritter.com and .cn were inaccessible for hours, while the VPN wasn't working either. Not handy when trying to finish the Extreme Challenge!!

It's not just direct censorship, but trying to make it harder to reach certain websites, while not blocking them totally.
It likely has something to do with this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13281200

Anyone else who thinks/feels the internet censorship in China is getting even worse of late?

I'd recommend changing VPN for starters. StrongVPN is really limited, and just extorts money out of people who don't really understand how bad a deal they're getting.

I am having a similar problem here in Shanghai, even if I don't know if it's really the same thing. I mean, every foreign student in my floor suddenly could't access anymore foreign websites for hours, even the most insignificant ones (while Chinese websites all work). The fact is that I don't have any problem if I connect using the computers inside the library, so I thought it was just a connection problem in our building...

Freedur is still working pretty well for us in Hainan...

http://www.freedur.me/clients/aff.php?aff=087

I had the same problem during the weekend in Beijing, quite severe, sometimes for hours. When I arrived back in Shanghai on Sunday evening, everything was normal at my home, whereas my wife in Beijing at the same time still had the same problem. So it might be a technical network problem in some areas.

its been bad for a couple of weeks now...seems worse in the daytime

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/13/china-cracks-down-on-vpn-use

Also this cant be unconnected to events happening in the ME. I guess the Chinese government thinks the revolutions are going to keep heading east.

@Byzanti
How is StrongVPN limited? Which other provider would you suggest?

thanks

The GFW has definitely been more severe of late. I run a boutique VPN service called Jungl VPN www.jungl.me and we have noticed that customers from BJ have had difficulty connecting recently.

Two weeks ago a server was blocked entirely and we spun another one up on a different IP and things went back to normal.

I think the GFW automatically blocks busy VPN connections because that week our server had transferred 100GB and all of a sudden it was blocked.

buskila: For paying the same amount as other VPN companies, you are limited to using one server, or if you want to change it there's a limited amount of changes per month. I think there was also a limit on the sort of connection it was (older non-encrypted protocol or the one used by openvpn). Something like this anyway.

A good VPN company will allow you to change to any of their servers using whatever connection type/protocol on will. And they wont charge you extra for it. I found that if one particular server was slow or not working, often one in another country would be fine, or say, I would have better luck connecting via TCP on a different port, not UDP. With StrongVPN I would have just been stuck with a connection that didn't work, unless I wanted to pay an unreasonable amount per month.

The one I used when in China was overplay.net, but there's probably a whole bunch of good ones. I also found that I needed to connect over TCP using a non standard VPN port to get a good connection that wasn't traffic filtered by my ISP. So make sure whatever one you choose has that available.

@Byzanti: thanks, i'll check overplay.net out...