the truth is that Chinese don't trust CNNIC, me included. if you search CNNIC on twitter, you'll find many Chinese talking about how to remove it permanently. what I want to add is that the we use SSL/TLS because we trust the CA, but now if the CA is not trusted, what do you think?

For a real success, they should be runnable for all email accounts, not only those using Gmail, etc. The reason is that China or Iran may simply block those providers (and it's true that China has blocked several services of Google). Also, encryption is needed, as China now filters all the traffic, including SMTP, POP3, IMAP. Moreover, it should be quite easy for the end users.

As a Chinese, I would say the Internet does have influence in China, and it's becoming more and more important for Chinese people. We have cases that some corruptions are exposed first over the Internet.
However, now the government is trying its best to control everything online, because it's currently an obvious threat to them. They've setup Internet filtering mechanisms, known as Great Fire Wall, to filter all the traffic in and out China. Also, they have a strict rule for web-sites in China, and they've already shut down many web-sites, especially blog providers, like Bullog.

more background is still needed :D besides the "grass-mud horse", another animal, "river crab" is also popular in China now, which is the enemy of the "horse". in Chinese, "river crab" sounds like "harmony", which is what the Chinese government use as an excuse to shut down websites they don't like.