On Jan 11, 2010, at 12:41 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
Many of us have been to China multiple times. I am not aware of
anyone who has been granted a business or professional visa, and
who has gone and behaved professionally, having nearly the
problems with entry or exit that have been typical of the US in
recent years (even returning US citizens). I've encountered
some long lines, bad multilingual signage, and miscellaneous
confusion on occasion, but China clearly has no monopoly on
those.
Thanks, John! I feel very reassured.
How about some practical guidance for the folks who haven't been there
multiple times, beyond "Behave professionally and don't do anything
stupid." We have lots of people who don't know they're "being stupid"
because in their world, what they're doing is absolutely normal and
they have absolutely no expectation of consequences.
These sorts of things can be subtle. A friend's brother was arrested
in the UAE last year for possession of melatonin, which is a common
over-the-counter sleep therapy in most of the world but is apparently
considered a major narcotic in their airport (although you can
supposedly buy it OTC in stores in-country). He was very surprised at
this, having never even thought it might be an issue. If we were
meeting in Dubai, I'd expect medications to be a major problem. But
we're not meeting in in Dubai, but China, and China quite likely has
equivalent surprises in store. Quite possibly, neither you nor I have
ever run afoul of them due to a combination of luck and discretion
(which I occasionally DO exercise). But also quite possibly, they'll
trip up some of our colleagues. Unlike the US, whose border-
liabilities are fairly well understood by IETFers, I'm pretty sure we
generally don't know what the likely problems are in China. We need to
find out, and we need to educate our community about them.
If we (the IETF) can't even figure out what China is doing to Internet
traffic, how are we supposed to understand the laws that aren't in our
area of expertise? If they think Wired Magazine is dangerous enough
that it must be blocked, chances are that they'd find the contents of
my home PC appalling (I do too, it runs Windows XP). How about what's
on Alice's laptop?
For example: As I understand it, one is allowed to bring only one
camera and one computer, not two of each. Will this affect camera-and-
computer loving IETFers? Possibly, if it's still true. Does the camera
in your cell phone count against the quota? How about the one built in
a Macbook?
I'm much more concerned about the prohibition that goes "Printed
matter, films, photos, gramophone records, cinematographic films,
loaded recording tapes and video- tapes,compact discs (video&audio),
storage media for computers and other articles which are detrimental
to the political, economic, cultural and moral interests of China."
That's pretty nebulous. It reads to me like "leave behind all personal
digital media, just in case" which is what I generally do. I travel in
a fairly sanitized mode, for numerous reasons. Will the average IETFer
do this? If not, what, if anything, is likely to surprise them?
How many IETFers are going to lose their currency-exchange receipts
and consequently be unable to legally turn their excess yuan back into
dollars? Or is this still even a problem?
--
Dean
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