Completely blocking Gmail would raise an uproar, not least among the many foreigners in China.
Such VPNs are mainly used by foreigners in China, less likely to be trouble-stirrers. (Fee-free VPNs are routinely blocked.) Gmail and other non-Chinese e-mail providers have also been largely left alone.
Figures released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security showed that 231, 700 foreigners were employed in China at the end of 2010, compared with 223, 000 in 2009.
The problem is so serious that Premier Wen is now blaming foreigners for price increases in China.
Foreigners are finding jobs in China on the back of its strong economy, which is performing vastly better than that of the United States or Europe, said Carter Yang, managing director of Robert Walters Talent Consulting Ltd China.
The China Youth Daily newspaper said that "foreigners have become spoiled by special treatment in China".
For example, its early management team was composed mostly of foreigners who have no experience in China.
It also says it welcomes foreigners to work and live in China and says its visa policies have been applauded.
The government's openness to wealthy foreigners from China and elsewhere is in contrast to its approach more generally to immigration, a polarizing topic in Australia particularly ahead of an election only four months away.
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These two, conflicting attitudes to foreigners - hostility and admiration - coexist in China today.
Many of the foreigners' factories are there because investors in China sought a bolt hole: China has its own high tariffs, many countries limit imports from China, and trade was each year threatened by the annual debate in Congress over the terms of America's trade relations with China.
When Whirlpool set up factories to make refrigerators, air-conditioners, washing machines and microwave ovens in China in 1994, it assumed that it was racing against other foreigners.
There is still tourism from elsewhere in China, rapidly picking up again after a slump in 2008 (foreigners are kept on a tight leash lest they foment unrest).
The remarkable thing, says Gordon Orr, of the Shanghai office of McKinsey, a consultancy, is how China has allowed foreigners to come in and dominate entire industries carmaking, for example.
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This makes them consistent with other measures to relax restrictions on the capital account such as the expansion of the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme, which allows foreigners to bring portfolio investment capital into China but only in a carefully regulated manner.
Foreign currency flowed into North Korea in a number of ways including cross border trade with China and visiting foreigners, he said.
The luxury craze has been partly fueled by the influx of deep-pocketed foreigners from places like Russia and China, who are streaming into New York City in search of "trophy apartments" that can serve as pied-a-terres.
In many ways, though, China is still not an easy place for foreigners to do business.
That would not only benefit the foreigners, but China too which is probably the main reason it is courting them in the first place.
The media in China has touched on various topics - including North Korea's warning to foreigners to evacuate, bird flu, milk powder and the German band Kraftwerk.
Long-time resident Luise Schafer was one of the first foreigners to move to Shanghai after China re-established ties with the rest of the world in the late 1970s.
But contrary to outward appearances, the opportunity for China lies, not in cleaning up its environment, but in selling related technologies to foreigners.
The people accept this because the party has delivered on its side of the bargain, and because it has generated nationalist enthusiasm for regaining China's place in the world, overturning a century of humiliation at the hands of foreigners.
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