Yes, there are some. You may try the URL at
The homepage for ChinaNet, a somewhat technically oriented network, is based at
The cernet homepage located in Tsinghua University: http://www.cernet.edu.cn,
( IP address 159.226.47.65 ) It provides some basic statistics for the
People's Republic of China, and some links to other universities in China.
It describes some facts about "The National Computing/Networking Facility of China" (NCFC), a project supported by the World Bank.
If you are interested in knowing China from an American viewpoint, try the WWW page for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
and, while there, choose "China" under the entries "Publications" and "The World Factbook 1995". You can directly go to the CIA file about China by
Hongkong will be handed over from Britain to the People's Republic of China in 1997. The newsgroups "soc.culture.hongkong" and "soc.culture.hongkong.entertainment" may give you a taste of Hong Kong today. Currently the official WWW site for the Hong Kong government is at
Macau is currently under Portuguese administration. The official URL for Macau is at
For the Macau Internet Gateway Service, you can try the URL at
which also includes a pointer to the homepage for the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone.
For news information, you can try the URL for the China News Agency, which is at
where you can read both English and Chinese news (a Chinese environment is required). You will need to provide an account name and a password to access news here. On the other hand, now People's Daily is also online at
though a Chinese environment will be needed.
You might also try the WWW page at
with the title "China the Beautiful", where you can find some information about the traditional side of China, like writings of Confucius, Tang poetry and other art issues. You do not need a Chinese environment to visit this site.
For more information regarding WWW, subscribe to the newsgroups "comp.infosystems.www.misc" and "comp.infosystems.www.announce".
The ftp server for NCFC is located at the URL
It covers the information about NCFC and ChinaNet.
The ftp server for CERNET is at the URL
It seems to be under construction just now and more things are being added.
You can find some interesting software, like "talk" in Chinese, at the ftp servers in Beijing and Shanghai:
ftp://info.bta.net.cn/pub/software
and
ftp://info.sta.net.cn/pub/software
The ftp server at Tsinghua University is now set up at:
You can share something you created with others by putting them in the directory "/incoming". Please remember to send an E-mail to "hzr@net.tsinghua.edu.cn" for a description of your package and not to infringe the copyrights of the commercial softwares.
"ftp.ifcss.org" is not located in Mainland China, but it provides a lot of useful information (like immigration) and Chinese software. You can try the URL at
and have a tour there.
The FTP site for China News Digest, "ftp.cnd.org", keeps some information regarding back issues of CINET-L ( Chinese Internet Tech Forum non-public discussion list ), and CND's Chinese Magazine. You can go to the directory "/pub/cinet" to fetch them.
There does not seem to be a server explicitly reserved for archie in China. However, you can make use of the "Archie Request Form" at
to start your archie search. In the form there is a field with which you can select the archie server you want to use, which should be close to your site in the network sense for best performance.
You can try the gopher server at
It contains information about NCFC and libraries. On the other hand, the server
includes some introductory information about NCIC. Accessing this gopher server requires some GB encoding software, and it seems that this site is not yet well built.
The gopher server at CERNIC (in Tsinghua University) might be the master server in China. Its URL is at
It registers all the open gopher servers connected to CERNET in China.
Peking University also set up a gopher server, which is located at
It includes a phonebook directory for PKU and also some Usenet FAQ documents which might be convenient for people in China.
In addition to the the academic and educational sites, there are some Internet connection service providers in China. Below is a partial list of these providers:
This news server carries about 1080 newsgroups as of June, 1995. (You might also try replacing all "bta" above with "spt".)
The Web page http://www.bta.net.cn/what_new.html includes some information about account applications.
If you just want to open an E-mail account in Mainland China, you can contact
CNC Ms. Xiqiong Zhang zxq@ns.cnc.ac.cn
IHEP Ms. Xiao-guang Wang 86-10-255-4324
or Ms. Ge-tao Li 86-10-256-1604
SICCUIN Ms. Huang 86-10-809-3033
Fax: +809-3045
FUDAN Mr. Liangyao Chen 86-21-534-7577
DDN officials in the Bureau 86-10-201-2994
CEIC no specific person 86-10-822-1972
CHINAPAC no specific person 86-10-601-0861
In the Shanghai region you can send an E-mail to CHEN, Liang-yao at "lychen@fudan.ihep.ac.cn" or call him at (86)21-534-7577 for accounts with E-mail access. Other Internet services might be added soon.
The top-level domain name for addresses in China is "cn". However, the secondary level domain is somewhat different from those used in the USA. A brief listing is as follows:
ac.cn Academic Community ( Academy of Science ) edu.cn EDUcational sites (universities) go.cn GOvernmental departments co.cn COmmercial sites (COmpanies) or.cn ORganizations bj.cn BeiJing sh.cn ShangHai ..... .....
Some Internet Service Providers (ISP), especially those from the U.S., might offer accounts which do not use the "cn" convention.
Some sites, especially educational sites, are listed below.
You can try to connect your newsreader program (such as "tin") to the following newsservers to read local Usenet newsgroups in China. However, please remember that the Internet connection across the Pacific may be slow at times. Listed below are a few of them:
All of the above newsservers refuse connections from the University of California, Los Angeles and they may only be available to some local (in China) users.
If you are in Mainland China and you are interested in some groups which newsservers in Mainland China do not carry, you can try to connect your news reader to some newsservers outside the Mainland by setting the environmental variable "NNTPSERVER" to them and read news directly there.
You can try "fconvx.ncifcrf.gov" and "newsserver.technet.sg" as your NNTPSERVER. On the other hand, there are also some open news servers in Taiwan. Read the FAQ for "soc.culture.taiwan", Internet part for details.
Some of the newsservers are for reading only while some others also enable you to post.
There are now two active BBS' in Mainland China as far as we know:
"bbs.ncic1.ac.cn", "159.226.43.26"
aliased as "jet.ncic1.ac.cn", and
"bbs.net.tsinghua.edu.cn", "166.111.1.11"
aliased as "captain.net.tsinghua.edu.cn".
You can login with the login id "bbs" for Chinese-GB coding scheme, or "bb5" for Chinese-Big5 coding scheme. No password is required.
In the Internet, there are some remailers who help people to send E-mail and/or post to the Usenet anonymously. In this way, basically people can enjoy the freedom of speech they like without facing possible prosecution. However, these remailers are basically for those who need protection from possible persecution, not for people who wish to make irrelevant and irresponsible postings without taking any responsibility, like attacking some individual or organization and then hiding oneself behind the anonymous screen. If such net-abuse is repeated again and again, eventually the remailer will be forced to shut down. This is not good for those people who do have a legitimate need for the anonymous shelter.
Listed below is a partial list of anonymous E-mail remailers:
remailer@utopia.hacktic.nl nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu remailer@rebma.mn.org remail@vox.xs4all.nl remailer@ideath.goldenbear.com remailer@nately.ucsd.edu
You can add the line
Request-Remailing-To: destination@address
in the header of the message to deliver the mail to the intended recipient "destination@address". You can also put two colons ( :: ) on the very first line of your message, then on the second line put "Request-Remailing-To:" followed by the address you want the message to go to anonymously. After this, skip a line, then start the actual message you want from the fourth line. By repeating the double colon convention ( :: ), you can actually direct your mail through several anonymous remailers, which makes it much more difficult to trace.
For more information about these anonymous remailers, you can finger "remailer-list@kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu" or try the WWW site "http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html". The Web site includes detailed descriptions about the miscellaneous anonymous remailers and the services they provide.
All the above remailers allow you to send E-mail anonymously, but the recipient cannot reply your message. If you want to receive replies anonymously, you can try the remailer "remailer@soda.csua.berkeley.edu". You can finger that address for more information.
There are some mail-to-news gateways available as follows.
group.name@news.demon.co.uk group.name@cass.ma02.bull.com group.name@paris.ics.uci.edu group.name.usenet@canaima.Berkeley.EDU
You send an E-mail to the above addresses (replacing the "group.name" by the newsgroup in which you want to post your message), and the gateway will post the message for you. However, please remember that none of these gateways provide anonymous postings. In order to make your posts anonymous, you have to send your messages to the above sites through an anonymous remailer.
The anonymous service provided by "anon.penet.fi" might be the most famous and trustworthy one currently available. It assigns an address in the form "anxxxxxx@anon.penet.fi" so any mail sent to this address will be forwarded to you. Unlike the aforementioned list of anonymous remailers, it provides a password feature for people to use it for anonymous E-mail and Usenet postings (the password is mandatory for Usenet postings ), which means that no one else can post or mail as you. For details about this service, send an E-mail to "help@anon.penet.fi".
There are some basic warnings about the anonymous mailing and posting issue:
Some remailers might return your submission back to you if you have any incorrect settings, which reveals what you said to anyone who can read your E-mails, like your system administrator. Always test it first before you send/post.
For post testings, please use the appropriate test newsgroups (like misc.test, alt.test, sci.test, and so on) instead of posting it in SCC, wasting everyone's time.
An E-mail and/or a Usenet posting becomes anonymous only after it reaches the remailer site. Before that, technically any network node which relays your message from your computer to the destination remailer can know who you are and what you said. In addition, some anonymous remailers might log your transactions; this log might be released under the legal process in the country where the remailer is located.
Thus, if you use the remailers to protect yourself, know that they do not provide a complete assurance of anonymity. Moreover, if you use them for some illegal purpose acknowledged by the international public (such as posting commercial software or other copyright-protected material) you might get caught.
To sum up, if you indeed fear the authorities, remain silent and do not send E-mail or post messages anonymously.
written by: Tung-chiang Yang < tcyang@seas.ucla.edu > and Zhan Su < cssuzhan@pku.edu.cn >
with editorial assistance from: Mark Swofford < mswofford@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu >
List of soc.culture.china FAQ authors and contributors (in alphabetical order)
Jihong Cole-Dai <
jidai@magnus.acs.ohio-sate.edu >
Bo Peng < bo@saavik.cem.msu.edu
>
Ray Zhan Su < cssuzhan@pku.edu.cn
>
Mark Swofford <
mswofford@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu >
Wuchun Wu < wuwu@phys.ksu.edu
>
Tung-Chiang Yang < tcyang@ee.ucla.edu
>