James Fallows argued pretty persuasively that these sorts of things aren't actually relevant to the Chinese government's ability to accomplish effective censors

James Fallows argued pretty persuasively that these sorts of things aren't actually relevant to the Chinese government's ability to accomplish effective censorship in his article about the Great Firewall: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won’t bother. Most Chinese people, like most Americans, are interested mainly in their own country. All around them is more information about China and things Chinese than they could possibly take in. The newsstands are bulging with papers and countless glossy magazines. The bookstores are big, well stocked, and full of patrons, and so are the public libraries. Video stores, with pirated versions of anything. Lots of TV channels. And of course the Internet, where sites in Chinese and about China constantly proliferate. When this much is available inside the Great Firewall, why go to the expense and bother, or incur the possible risk, of trying to look outside? The same points arguably hold for the Green Dam. Edit: I guess I missed the point of the advisory (see comment below). I assumed they were discussing methods of circumventing the system, but after a second (more careful) reading, that's obviously not the biggest concern. It's really a crappy situation: mandated software that's this broken. Either join a botnet or potentially raise the government's suspicions by uninstalling the software.