Several China Blogs Go Offline

by Guest on Fri Jul 16, 2010 2:34 am

BEIJING—Chinese Internet users reported a spate of blog shutdowns in what some bloggers say appears to be the latest government effort to tighten reins on expression and exert greater control over the country's fast-growing and increasingly complicated Internet.

On Thursday evening, the sites of several prominent bloggers, including Pu Zhiqiang, an outspoken attorney, were inaccessible. A blogger named Yao Yuan listed dozens of other blogs of outspoken writers, lawyers and others hosted by Sohu.com Inc. that he said were inaccessible on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. The blogger referred to the closures as an Internet "mass murder."

The complaints come as concerns grow among Chinese Internet users about a possible crackdown on China's burgeoning microblogging services, after a wave of odd glitches disrupted access to some websites offering the Twitter-like services this week.

It's unclear whether Chinese authorities, who regulate local Internet content and block some foreign websites, are behind the sudden blog closures. Mr. Pu, an attorney known for being outspoken on sensitive issues, said he was given no warning before his site stopped working. "They should at least notify me and tell me what's wrong with my blog! It's unfair and there's no transparency at all," he said. He said it wasn't the first time it happened. "I think [it's because] I tell the truth. People like to see the truth, but the government doesn't."

Chinese government officials weren't immediately available for comment.

China's censorship efforts have grown stronger in the last couple years, with an increasing number of foreign websites blocked for users inside the country, and the launch of government campaigns to clamp down on mobile websites. Officials have tightened scrutiny of Web domain names registered in China, and stepped up oversight of online media companies. The efforts have resulted in the closure of thousands of websites, including online video websites and a Chinese microblogging service called Fanfou.

Even before the latest concerns surfaced, blogs and microblogging services hosted by Chinese websites already were monitored by the website operators, with politically sensitive content filtered out. Access in China to Twitter and to many foreign blog-hosting services including Google Inc.'s Blogger are at least partially blocked.

The growing restrictions, along with Google's highly publicized decision to stop cooperating with Chinese censorship regulations this year, have increased awareness of censorship among many of China's roughly 420 million Internet users.

"If Internet users don't speak out, all sites will be cracked down on in the future," Mr. Yao said, according to the AP. He owns an Internet promotion company in Shanghai. "Ordinary people will forever lose their freedom to speak online, and the government can rest without worrying anymore."

The concerns over microblogging began Friday night when Sohu.com's microblogging services became inaccessible for the weekend. Service resumed Monday, but then the microblogging websites of Sohu, Sina, Tencent, Netease and even a similar site created by state-run newspaper People's Daily suddenly began showing a "beta" icon next to their logos, suggesting some sort of testing. Then, on Tuesday evening, Netease's microblogging service also became inaccessible for two days.

Sina.com's microblogging service, the most popular such service in China with more than 5 million users, has been largely uninterrupted so far, despite also bearing the "beta" icon. U.S. service Twitter has been blocked in China since last year and is not widely used.

A customer service representative at Sohu confirmed that its microblogging service was closed between Friday night and Monday, but said the closure was due to maintenance rather than a government order. Still, the simultaneous display of "beta" icons on all the microblogging services worried users because "site maintenance" has been used in the past by Chinese websites as an excuse to address outages related to private discussions with the government.

Chinese Internet executives have been complaining in private forums that government censorship authorities are overstepping their boundaries and interfering with fair competition, people familiar with the discussions say. But incidents like the apparent blog and microblogging crackdown suggest those complaints have not discouraged authorities.

by cool66616 on Fri Jul 16, 2010 2:37 am

[b] Great post

Several China Blogs Go Offline

Several China Blogs Go Offline

Re: Several China Blogs Go Offline