Every business I went to in the mainland(beyond the economic zones, in the 3rd world areas) had fully functioning and open internet connections. I browsed FR from there any number of times and likely will again on the next trip in January.
The internet is one of the primary reasons why so many businesses can operate in China. Good, bad or indifferent, if you cut off China, there will be a MASSIVE hue and cry from business and likely some de-investment in China.
For example, one thing my company does is to have letters printed in China, inserted, sorted and sealed. The letters then go on the water and land on the west coast. Start to finish, takes about three and a half weeks. The name lists are generated live and transferred via FTP to the printer who begins almost immediately. Without the internet, you're adding at least 48 hours to the process and in reality, it's probably a week by the time you would burn CDs, overnight them to Hong Kong and drive them into the mainland. You're risking problems with the CD, problems with transit and printing data that is now older than it could have been. Time is money, that few days does matter.
I'm sure other companies that do live transactions with databases maintained in the USA would be drastically affected.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm all for telling the Chinese to go stuff a wonton, but the internet is definitely important to international businesses operating in China, and as far as I can tell, the censors don't block anything. I even did a search for Falun Gong, no problemo, I could hit every site that google listed. Of course, the reds may have shown up the next day after I left. heh.
Well that sucks for the average Chinese person who are filtered/censored by Intranets. While the foreign business man and Communist party officials get full Internet access.
I hope those totalitarian sycophants in charge fears do come soon true.