Well, yes, but better than nothing. And it may be precedent-setting. It could be an important first step towards taking it offline permanently in the future.
On the other hand, I find it funny that the great wall of china kept out foreign invaders...and this seems to do the opposite (keep the chinese out of foreign stuff).
Hmm, . . ., I can definitely understand skepticism with regards to China opening itself up to international information exchange, but honestly, I think that it's becoming more and more critical for China to do so.
For one thing, China is currently on a huge push to expand scientific research ties with foreign powers. There have been several articles recently, especially in Seed magazine, about China's desire to forge stronger research links with other Asian countries (especially India and Japan), as well as Western powers (the EU and USA). Now I could be wrong (international relations and national development are FAR from being areas of my expertise), but it seems a truism to me that China will at some point HAVE to start liberalizing its information policies. This goes both for domestic things (free press, free speech, etc.) and for foreign interchange of ideas (tearing down the great firewall, for instance.)
Again, not a topic I know scads about, but it seems like if China wants to play nice with foreign powers in academic/intellectual arenas, they'll need to dear down some walls, inluding firewalls.
