The new 3G Amazon Kindle is proving rather popular in China as it has the handy ability to circumvent the country's wall of web censorship.

As was found in the Pocket-lint review, the  Amazon Kindle 3G is a pretty smart device, but rather than its great E-Ink display or massive ebook library proving the biggest selling points, it appears that its the use of Amazon’s Whispernet network that's the hit.

This seems to be the big draw, as, according to the South China Morning Post, it is this that allows the GSM device to bypass China's online security, and surf previously banned web pages.

Sites included in the Chinese web ban include Facebook and Twitter, which lie behind what is commonly dubbed the "Great Firewall" - a highly amusing play on words. These sites are now accessible for anyone who can get their hands on a new Kindle.

However, Amazon is stating that it's not able to ship the device to mainland China or offer up any of its services, instead the device is being slipped in a few at a time, as one seller reported: "He has sold 300 in the past month".

Regardless of how many are sold on the grey market it's still a drop in the ocean compared to the 420 million web users in China.

For those that can afford it, the Kindle might provide Chinese Kindle users with a little extra web content, and might be more successful than Google's previous attempts at breaking down web censorship in China.