Keeping the "Great Firewall" Up

Not exactly surprising news for anyone who's been in China lately, but the government here's officially announced that they will not in bring down the "Great Firewall" during the Olympic Games.  At various times since I arrived, Blogspot, Wordpress, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook have been blocked by the domestic internet police.  (Stuff on human rights, Tibet, Tianamen Square and Taiwan, on the other hand, are always blocked.)  By and large, you can get around the restrictions with proxy servers, but not everyone knows how to do that. 

Different stuff is blocked for different reasons, Facebook being one of the most interesting examples.  Access has been pretty sketchy since it launched its Chinese site, and from what I hear it's because of a couple different reasons.  First of all, launching anything like Facebook, which allows users to freely express their opinions, is bound to get the government's attention.  And quadruply so if you're launching just before the Olympics start.  Secondly, I've been told that Facebook simply didn't go through the proper channels to get themselves started in China.  They designed a Chinese site targeted at Chinese users, but tried to skip all the legal complications that involved by simply hosting their site abroad.  So that didn't really fly.  Moral of the story: don't rock the boat if you're a big company trying to make inroads into China.

Anyways, even though the government promised that visitors would have unfettered internet access, it's pretty clear that they never really intended to follow through on that.  Once you open the floodgates, it's not really feasible to close them back up again.  It'll be interesting to see what the backlash will be like from foreign journalists doing research and travelers trying to Facebook their friends.

Update: Looks like China's trying to find some middle ground to show how "open" they are while still keeping a tight grip on everything...a bunch of websites that have been forever blocked are now accessible, including BBC Chinese and Wikipedia Chinese.  Amnesty International and other human rights/Tibet/etc... sites are still down though.  Shanghaiist has more.