Bianca Aguilar

Technology is already making waves in many parts of rural Southeast Asia where the majority of the unbanked reside. Much of the change there is driven by cheaper mobile phones and affordable data plans.

Many major non-Chinese sites are completely inaccessible. Trying to load up a blocked site usually gets you a good ol’  Page Cannot be Displayed  message, and for reasons seemingly unknown to anyone, also seems to crash your browser’s ability to load anything at all for thirty seconds or so.

Only businesses with a valid Chinese business license are legally allowed to host websites on a Chinese server; individuals may not own commercial websites hosted within the mainland. This is controlled at the hosting level: every website on a Chinese host must register for an  ICP number , which the host will ask for and verify before you’re