We are currently monitoring an extreme long load time of our website in China. The reason seems to be the javascript request which needs to be included for using Google Loader: http://www.google.com/jsapi
As you can see when testing the url on this website, the request is extreme slow or times out after 60 seconds: http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html?host=http://www.google.com/jsapi
Since the script is included in the head (as recommended by the documentation) page load is blocked until the js request stopps.
My question is: Do you detect the same issue on your website in china? I'm wondering why I can not find more about this issue in the web...
We are experiencing the same problems with our site hosted in China. Since the first of june most google services have been blocked. Only google analytics seems to be "relative" stable. A lot of big chinese sites still use google analytics that's the reason why it's still more or less available.
Google barely has a market share of 2% in the search enginge market so many chinese users will be unafected by this.
You should try to use local Chinese services like baidu maps instead of google maps for example.
more information on why:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/business/chinas-battle-against-google-heats-up.html?_r=1