Recently Unblocked in China…
It seems yesterday’s dispatch of sites being spontaneously unblocked was part of a larger move. Today, Hu Jintao held a rare pow-wow of media outlets in the wake of Internet restrictions being eased. From the WSJ:
The 66-year-old Mr. Hu’s appearance before foreign reporters Friday was a rare move into the public spotlight for a leader who has long shunned it. Mr. Hu has never given a news conference in China or abroad.
From the BBC:
Hosting the Games showed China’s desire for peaceful global ties, he said.
His comments came amid apparent concessions by Beijing in a row over internet access for journalists.
More sites which had been blocked in Olympic media centres - such as that of rights group Amnesty International - were accessible on Friday, journalists said.
Here’s a rather representative list of sites that are now available in China, which include newspaper, magazine and NGO web sites previously hard blocked. This is taken from some that were sent on a recent Great Firewall list, and some I’ve added.
- 西方媒体：(Western media)
- 路透社 http://cn.reuters.com/
- 维基百科 http://zh.wikipedia.org/
- 自由亚洲电台 http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/
- 美国之音 http://www.voanews.com/chinese/
- 华尔街日报 http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/index.asp
- 金融时报中文 http://www.ftchinese.com/sc/index.jsp
- 香港媒体：(Hong Kong media)
- 明报新闻网 http://www.mingpaonews.com/
- 明报月刊 http://www.mingpaomonthly.com/cfm/main.cfm
- 亚洲时报 http://www.atchinese.com/
- 亚洲周刊 http://www.yzzk.com/cfm/main.cfm
- 南华早报 http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/
- 南华早报中文 http://olympics.scmp.com/GCO_Simpchi_Index.aspx
- 苹果日报 http://www1.appledaily.atnext.com/template/apple/sec_main.cfm?
- 台湾媒体：(Taiwan media)
- 联合新闻网 http://udn.com/NEWS/main.html
- 中国时报 http://news.chinatimes.com/mainpage.htm
- 自由时报 http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/index
- NGOs
- Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org
- Reporters Sans Frontiers http://www.rsf.org (Chinese site unblocked only in Olympics media center)
- Amnesty International http://www.amnesty.org
This is actually quite remarkable for folks living in China. The “Big Three” NGOs that have been unrelenting critics of China have been reliably blocked for years. YZZK (Yazhou Zhoukan) and Apple Daily both in Hong Kong, have done some of the most critical journalism regarding China.
RSF, acknowledging the good news, doesn’t take much time to celebrate and continues to push hard.
“This partial lifting of censorship shows that the Chinese government is not completely insensitive to pressure. If the entire world had been pressuring China since 2001, even before these games were assigned to Beijing, the situation might have been different today. And perhaps imprisoned journalists would have been freed before the opening ceremony.
Let’s be clear though: these unblocked sites are still subject to the sophisticated keyword blocking system of the GFW, which looks at both URLs and the body of web sites. The sites above are no longer blocked, as a rule, but the content on the site might still trigger a block. On the plus side, it seems the keyword filtering of the GFW seems to be less sensitive than normal, but the big taboo subjects are still blocked quickly.
NBC Nightly News did a piece on the blocking yesterday (July 31). I was amused when Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn was on camera demonstrating how to use a virtual private network and noted that living with the net nanny wasn’t that big a deal.
Goldkorn: “I don’t see that it’s really going to impede anybody’s work.”
NBC: “Do you think the foreign media is just whining a little bit?”
Goldkorn: “Yeah. Absolutely they’re whining.”
I suppose one could make the argument that leaving the restricted GFW “harmonized” Internet as-is would have given foreign journalists a real taste of what China’s Internet users deal with every day. Now, they get a freed-up, “special” Internet to do their job and this issue goes away for the next three weeks. The question is, after the party’s over, will any of the sites above stay unblocked.
August 2nd, 2008 03:22
[…] Andrew Lih has more. It looks like this was part of a broader opening up — Chinese now have access to a lot of sites. This is actually quite remarkable for folks living in China. The “Big Three” NGOs that have been unrelenting critics of China have been reliably blocked for years. YZZK (Yazhou Zhoukan) and Apple Daily, both in Hong Kong, have done some of the most critical journalism regarding China. […]
August 3rd, 2008 17:23
[…] –A longer list of Web sites recently unblocked around China. [Andrew Lih] […]
August 3rd, 2008 23:32
See, I think the more we crow about VPNs making everything available, the larger invitation we are sending Net Nanny and her coven of witches to shut that particular gate in the GFW.
Or am I just being paranoid?
August 4th, 2008 00:36
[…] So wait. China craves international approval more than anything else — that’s the reason for the unblocks. But why is China doing crazy-unpopular stuff like calling the Dalai Lama a terrorist? […]
August 4th, 2008 00:38
Andrew,
Very interesting.
You confirmed what I had suspected about the so-called coming down of the Great Firewall.
In fact, as you suggest, many of the sites remain partially unavailable.
I hope someone does an analysis so we can see what is really opened up.
Tom
August 4th, 2008 07:29
David,
As I understand it, it would be impossible to block off all VPN services, although individual services could be blocked.
So W*t*p*a, which has been widely written about and which advertises on Shanghaiist.com, may well be blocked, despite the fact that you need a foreign credit card to pat for the service.
But there are a bunch of other providers… If you have Amex or Visa, there’s nothing to worry about.
Let’s hope I don’t have to eat my words.
August 4th, 2008 17:01
The VPN hole has been there forever and there is no way that this is going to get blocked without every foreign company in China screaming.
My guess is that things will remain relatively open until after the Olympics when things will get blocked again after the cameras leave.
August 5th, 2008 02:50
[…] Il blogger Isaac Mao di Life 2.0 ha compilato un elenco [zh] di siti giornalistici sbloccati nell’ultima settimana in vista dei Giochi Olimpici di Pechino. Sono in molti a chiedersi per quanto tempo resteranno sbloccati, e Mao esorta quindi a “iscriversi subito in tanti a tali siti” per vedere cosa succede. […]
August 6th, 2008 10:54
Free Expression Principles…
Major technology companies, including Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, have agreed, in principle, to a voluntary set of principles designed to “guide businesses when they encounter laws and practices that may contravene international human rights st…
August 8th, 2008 20:13
Dear Mr. Lih
Good day!
Im Francis Christian Lubag, a research associate from China Business Philippines magazine. We are currently working on an article regarding internet censorship in China.
Upon looking for data on the sites recently unblocked by the government for the Olympics, I found that your list is the most comprehensive one (to date, at least).
With this, I’d like to ask for permission if we can use the list of unblocked sites that you’ve published for our news article. Please expect that you will be cited as the source of that information.
Please e-mail me at f.lubag@fairnewsmedia.com or at f.lubag@gmail.com. Thank you very much and Im looking forward to your positive response.
Francis Christian Lubag
research associate
0906-481-8499
f.lubag@gmail.com
f.lubag@fairnewsmedia.com
http://chinabusinessphilippines.com/
September 21st, 2008 23:41
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