Reports are flying all over the blogosphere today about "China blocking" more US based websites, including search engines, and in some cases redirecting traffic in China to Chinese search engines instead of Google and Yahoo.
The truth of the matter is probably not nearly so simple. As I understand it it's almost never as simple as "China is blocking X.Y.Z websites". It depends on which ISP you're using, there are technical obstacles to good service and there's a maze of face-to-face meetings that go on in order to plan and enact any such censorship, redirects, etc. It's highly unlikely that there is any nationwide policy suddenly put into place that effects internet users all across that huge nation. There are certainly a few big policies that are self-enforced by online service providers, but many of the comments being left on today's China coverage denying nation-wide censorship are probably the honest truth.
Today's news coverage itself deserves some serious scrutiny.
David Feng at BlogNation tests a number of sites from inside China and says access is relatively unchanged. The service GreatFireWallofChina.org purports to act as a proxy for testing but tells me that Baidu is inaccessible in China, so much for that. There are in fact probably few nation-wide policies enforced online in China and even if there were it would be hard to verify them.
Some of the language of "economic attack" may be thinly veiled jingoism and calls to "boycott the Olympics" are pretty tasteless in light of the true Chinese crimes against humanity that long term human rights activists have been citing for withdrawal from the event. Darfur? Loud voices calling for economic sanctions in response to the alleged activities of the Western world's economic challengers sound like fair-weather friends of free speech to me.
Online freedom in China is important, but online accuracy is important everywhere.
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It's amazing how blatant the civil rights abuses are, yet here we are, holding the Olympics in Beijing.
Excellent piece, Mr. Kirkpatrick!
Posted by: Michael Beck | October 18, 2007 9:56 AMThis is bigger than an ISP level, Marshall. There are internet backbones that service country. According to this page there's only 5. In other words, there are only five nexus points that have to handle filtering - certainly not something that would be tackled at an ISP level.
You may be right. Who knows. It could just take time. My point is that it would likely happen at a backbone level and not at an ISP level which would be much more intricate and complex and instroduce more opportunities for cracks.
Posted by: Aaron Brazell | October 18, 2007 9:59 AMKudos! Online accuracy is very important. I think a lot of bloggers forget that and are quick to state "boycott the Olympics" to stir up a fire. Problem is, there was no fire to stir up.
I'm so glad that you are back blogging full time these days, and actually do a little bit of thinking and research on your stories.
Rex
Posted by: Rex Dixon | October 18, 2007 10:13 AMAaron, thanks for the link - you're right, it could work like that. Oddly, it appears that it's not though, judging from the frequency of conflicting reports. One thing's for sure, it's hard to know just exactly what's going on.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | October 18, 2007 10:24 AMMarshall: Of course you're right that accuracy is important, but you have to keep in mind that the Chinese authorities are smarter than you and I, as well as all the nonprofits and profiteers that defend the country. The constant, unpredictable barrage of assaults against freedom are designed for plausible deniability. "Who? Us? Why, we don't censor, just look at X site on X service in X province at X time. See?" The Chinese internet heavies must be rubbing themselves raw every time someone says "false alarm." You're quite right that we should attempt to send no false alarms. but any declaration that 'China's not censoring' flies in the face of 50 years of Chinese history and policy.
Posted by: Curt | October 18, 2007 10:32 AMI am happy someone finally had the courage to call the blogosphere on the lack of accuracy here. There are too few people like you, I applaud you sir! Though I think you will be shouted down.
I was reading through the TechCrunch comments and everyone just ignored the posts about this not being true. Over at Digg, well, you can imagine. At Ycombinator's news site a guy mentioned that the story was false, and pointed to the evidence. That was the most down voted post.
You guys just scored some points in my book.
Posted by: exquisitus | October 18, 2007 10:38 AMA nice moment of sanity
Posted by: David | October 18, 2007 10:53 AMGFW it's a not reasonable, super crazy and extremely awful thing. Party is doing a really wrong thing for sure. They only know how to block sites and blind people with a not reasonable reason.
Posted by: kikiwawa | October 18, 2007 5:15 PMI live in Shanghai and at home (where I am subscribed to China Netcom) web searches on US search engines were redirected to Baidu, while at office (China Railcom) it seemed ok. I don't know about China Telecom, the main operator. But today everything is back to normal though.
Posted by: SEO in China | October 20, 2007 10:27 AMConsidering the complicity of U.S. tech companies such as Yahoo and Google in Chinese censorship, it's really hard for me to get upset with anything that hurts them as companies in that context.
I can't single this out as a particularly bad thing by China considering the really awful stuff they do.
Posted by: Clyde Smith | October 30, 2007 11:13 PM