How to get past China's Great Firewall and reach blocked sites? [closed]

I wonder if there are any other users who are annoyed like me by the Great Firewall set by the Chinese Government. If so would you please present me an effective way to get on YouTube? Since it's going to be China's flag-day or something, I tried almost all approaches from the internet like ultrasurf , hotspot shield proxy and some other web-based proxies, none worked to me.

What I want is just to be able to view and download a couple of videos, all tech and programming related. So if there's no way to get pass GFW, other work-arounds are still welcome. Thanks.

I'm asking for technical help. So please don't go any further to politics or anything, not interested and not productive.

I have tried the following to no avail:

tor + firefox
tor + opera
hotspot shield
Jap ( probably anony-service list banned )
ultra surf
http tunnel client ( not sure how to configure, tried an proxy but didn't help )
any other ordinary http proxies

Nothing worked for me up to now. I don't think this is "Mission: Impossible" and I don't want to wait till China's flag-day to be over, who knows, maybe they'll still be blocked.

Could some commercial solution be the final life-saver?

After a couple of days of following this question (and thanks to the folks who tried to help) it seems to me now this thread can't be loaded completely from my Firefox, the 'Connection reset' info starts to appear.

I picked the answer that actually is working for me. So maybe it's time to close this question because I will still want to access Stack Exchange in the future.

Solution 1:

It seems that Freegate (alternative domain) was not mentioned yet? It claims to have released version 6.89 just before the celebrations started. I have never used the program.

[EDIT] The English download page only shows older versions. Deducting an URL from that older versions, only gives me the August 26th 6.88 as the most recent. The Chinese version of the download page seems to confirm that, so the original Chinese version of that website might be much more up to date (and seems to be some "secure and uncensored Internet portal" as well). The older version 6.80 can be found on many alternative places, like via CNET or Softpedia. According to a tweet, "Freegate 6.89 U tunnel beta 4" is available on 91files.com.

It might only be free when used from within China.

And merely for the archives (as it won't help at this very moment) apparently some project called Haystack is about to be released soon:

Haystack is a new program to provide unfiltered internet access to the people of Iran. A software package for Windows, Mac and Unix systems, called Haystack, specifically targets the Iranian government’s web filtering mechanisms.

Similar to Freegate, the program directed against China’s “great firewall,” once installed Haystack will provide completely uncensored access to the internet in Iran while simultaneously protecting the user’s identity. No more Facebook blocks, no more government warning pages when you try to load Twitter, just unfiltered Internet.

Which compares itself to Tor as follows:

Tor focuses on using onion routing to ensure that a user's communications cannot be traced back to him or her, and only focuses on evading filters as a secondary goal. Because Tor uses standard SSL protocols, it is relatively easily to detect and block, especially during periods when the authorities are willing to intercept all encrypted traffic.

On the other hand, Haystack focuses on being unblockable and innocuous while simultaneously protecting the privacy of our users. We do not employ onion routing, though our proxy system does provide a limited form of the same benefit.

Solution 2:

I was going to suggest Tor but is seems that it is being cracked down on in China.

A very easy way to try Tor is OperaTor which is an installation of the Opera browser and Tor which just works with next to no effort at all.

Solution 3:

Have you looked at Hotspot Shield or HTTP-Tunnel Client?

Here is some text from the later:

HTTP-Tunnel acts as a socks server, allowing you to use your Internet applications safely despite restrictive firewalls and/or you not be monitored at work, school, goverment and gives you a extra layer of protection against hackers, spyware, ID theft's with our encryption.

Help and guides for HTTP-Tunnel Client are here.

Solution 4:

AN.ON - Anonymity.Online

as with most proxies, you'll have problems with youtube or othe video services. you may have to buffer, but accessing the site should be no problem at all.

Solution 5:

In China, proxies do not really help. It does not totally disguise your identity. Data still has to be served to a chinese ip and that will most likely fail.

I suggest you migrate to the civilised world or get a SIM card from another country to open data connections over HSDPA / UMTS. In the bigger cities of China this worked for me.