Skip Navigation
James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, will be published in May.
More

James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic; he is at work on another book about China. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.
« Previous Fallows | Next Fallows » Email Email Print Print

What It's Like to Search the Web in China Right Now

By James Fallows

Mar 22 2010, 7:32 PM ET

A reader in China sends this report on web-search in the immediate aftermath of Google's decision to stop filtering results. The Witopia mentioned below is a VPN service, which makes a computer inside China seem to be "outside" the country and therefore allows a user there to reach sites that would ordinarily be blocked by the "Great Firewall." Details here. Everything that follows in this post is the reader's report.
_____

"Google's most recent step regarding its presence in China was interesting but the current quick reply from China appears to be even more so.  At last check, this is what I have observed with some quick testing of Google's sites from within China and "outside" of China (through a Witopia connection).  Some findings (as of very early Tuesday morning in China):

From "outside" of China
From inside of China things are not so clean cut
  • As before, go to www.google.cn and you are redirected to www.google.com.hk
  • Innocuous searches in Chinese seem fine as before
  • However, do a more "interesting" search, such as 天安
Presented by

More at The Atlantic

Don't You Wish Satellite Phones Still Came With This Cute Little Dish? The Strange Accessories of Early Cell Phones
A Western Diet High in Sugars and Fat Could Contribute to ADHD A Sugary, Fatty Western Diet Could Be Contributing to ADHD
Picture of the Day: The Aurora Borealis From Space The Aurora Borealis From Space
A Brief History of the to-do List and the Psychology of Its Success A Brief History of the To-Do List and the Psychology of Its Success
SNL's Zooey Deschanel Episode: 5 Best Scenes The 5 Funniest Sketches From SNL's Zooey Deschanel Episode
Special Report
The Civil War National Portrait Gallery The Civil War
A 150th-anniversary commemorative issue, with Atlantic work by Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and others. Read more ›

Correspondents

View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

The Civil War, Part 3: The Stereographs

Feb 10, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

James Fallows
from the Magazine

Obama, Explained

As Barack Obama contends for a second term in office, two conflicting narratives of his presidency…

Barack Obama

Facing huge risks and holding inconclusive intel, the president makes a gutsy call to take out bin…

Hacked!

As email, documents, and almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives moves onto the…