I'll admit that when I moved to China, I didn't think that not being able to access YouTube in China would be a big deal. I was never really into the whole video blogging thing, and didn't use YouTube except to see videos that gained popularity and "everyone" saw - videos like Chocolate Rain and that fat guy singing whatever that Romanian pop-techno song was. But I now see the error in my thinking.

That was back in 2007. YouTube was popular, but it wasn't necessary to have access to by any means. However, I the Internet is changing, and videos are becoming a must for bloggers and websites that want to keep readers interested. It's not enough to write about something anymore - you need to have a video of it. If you're talking politics, you need a clip to show people what you're talking about. Do you blog about beer? A video of you talking about it will keep people listening for longer than if you just wrote about it. Any sort of instructions NEED to be accompanied with a visual. This is what YouTube is good for.

And people are doing it more and more. It's quick, easy, and free to upload videos onto YouTube, and getting easier to embed them in your posts. The problem is that even if we can access the site in China, the embedded YouTube video is blocked. Without VPNs or proxies to change our IP address, we can't access YouTube videos in China, even if the site they're featured on isn't blocked.

The best way to solve this is with a VPN. This is because you can connect to it when you connect to the Internet and just forget about it. This way, you don't have to worry about when you might run across a YouTube video you want to watch. Web based proxies will also allow you to access YouTube in China, but you have to type the URL into a secure browser to gain access. With a VPN, you can browse normally, with your normal browser, and sites/videos will be unblocked automatically.

VPNs will normally cost you 5-10 bucks a month, and can be download/installed on Mac, Windows, Linux, and a range of smart phones. For smart phone users in China, you might have to contact the VPN service before you purchase because some VPN protocols for phones are blocked in China. They've got a way to work around this, but it's going to depend on the type of phone and operating systems you use.