To those who have not yet heard, Google has closed its Chinese website and is now channelling ALL its e-mails through Google servers in Hong Kong. They are not censoring their material and they say that what they are doing is entirely within Chinese law.

I know little about Chinese law in such matters as this, but my belief is that it is simply a matter of time before the Chinese retaliate in such a way as to effectively block access to all Google material within China including that which originates overseas. Thus, everyone in China, who is using Gmail or Googlemail Accounts whether opened in China or not, should take precautions to protect their lists of contacts by exporting them into some other application - such as Microsoft Excel - but though this can be done, it is neither quick nor easy unless you are a computer geek. There is no way of mass export of email messages held in your Google system so any that you wish to retain must be forwarded one at a time to some other e-mail account or cut and pasted one by one into Microsoft Word or something similar.

I may be wrong of course, in which case you (and I for that matter) will have wasted time. But what if I am right? What if we all wake up one morning soon, to find that our Google e-mail systems are irrevocably blocked and we have lost all our contacts and important messages?

Dave