When I first got here last March, navigating the Internet was a real hassle. Wikipedia, Blogspot and Wordpress blogs were all blocked, while Youtube just kinda-sorta worked. Even Fanhouse.com, a sports website, was completely shut off. (I got here right when the Tibet riots broke out.) Things opened up pretty steadily during 2008, owing mostly to the Olympics and the huge influx of visitors/journalists, but the government has come back in 2009 by cracking down on websites that distribute or otherwise direct you to "vulgar" content. But last week, 91 domestic websites were shut down , including popular Chinese blog-hosting site bullog.cn. Coincidentally, bullog.cn is also the home of several prominent bloggers who signed the pro-democracy Charter 08 . Search sites like Google, Baidu (Chinese Google) and MSN were also chastised (presumably for letting people look up porn) but not formally punished.
According to Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent and current assistant professor of journalism at Hong Kong University, this type of thing happens pretty regularly:
There are crackdowns from time to time. Generally, before Chinese New Year, there is some sort of anti-porn crackdown that takes place. It's a seasonal thing, not many people are entirely shocked. There was a crackdown on an online video site last March, which resulted in a 24-hour shutdown. Companies in China have expectations of these sorts of things and prepare to deal with it.
-CNN Asia
1 comment:
I can't really imagine myself living in china, in my job i visit like a 1000 sites in a day, of many parts of the world, but mostly wikipedia and google, could I really find a good job in china like the one I have now ? I guess that is impossible...
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