In preparation for the 60th anniversary of communistic rule, China strengthens Great Firewall (GFC). Apart from pushing local ISPs to deploy more powerful technology, the chinese government used its net censorship mechanisms to attack parts of the Tor network. According to TorProject Blog, the Great Firewall of China blocked the public list of relays and directory authorities. The Register reports that today in China the 80% of the public relays are blocked by IP address and TCP port combination. As stated last year, the Tor Project knew that such a day would come. Due to this fact, Tor Project encourages Tor network members to volunteer to run more bridge relays to help Chinese users. Contrary to public relays, bridge relays’ addresses are not publicly available and were added to the network as a counter-measure to blocking.
Finally, at the Tor Project Blog there are a pair of graphs that confirm the facts of blocking the majority of public relays and the rise of bridge relays in China.
