TOR is effectively blocked in China, the only way to use it there is to setup a private obfsproxy somewhere abroad, but I believe it's beyond an average user skills.
I guess what they are going to do when Turkish government will buy some advanced DPI hardware with SVM (Support Vector Machines) which is capable of blocking TOR
I don't read interviews with Linus Torvalds anymore. He's a harsh and selfish person and seems like his number one hobby is not software development, but swearing at people.
I had problems accessing google services from China long before. I just started using proxy for all google websites, so I didn't even mentioned last changes