Exactly. The best bet is to use a service that is used by a huge number of users and try to hide your traffic in it. I wonder why they didn't do gmail -> gmail for example. Maybe there are good reasons.
China is a special case in that GMail (and many other services) are blocked; most of the directly-accessible major services are operated by companies that will readily cooperate with the government. Hosting your spies in an environment where even the content would be available to the government seems like a generally bad idea. Using a VPN could subject a spy to additional scrutiny, especially if they work in a sensitive domain.
nneonneo|2 years ago