If you visit the Democratic China blog from the U.S. you can access it fine. But if you try to access it from within China, you'll get this (click on image to see it more clearly):
The anonymous blogger's initial reaction:
The final sentence in English there requires no translation...
He/she also says in Chinese:
"Please note that I have either entered the blacklist kept by Microsoft employees, or I have been shut down because I triggered their keyword filters.
During the Republican period when one newspaper got shut down, the editor said: "Newspapers that don't get shut down aren't good newspapers, and the editors who don't get beaten aren't good editors. If my blog can attract the attention of the central Communist Party, it must be a good blog."
(I added the wikipedia link to some history about Republican China, before the Communists took over. I talked a bit about the historical parallels between then and now in an article last month, and how history might be repeating itself, despite the Communist Party's best efforts. Are U.S. tech companies ultimately betting on the losing horse?)
In a later post, the blogger concludes that his/her blog was blocked because he/she wrote about and reproduced material from a recently banned publication, Freezing Point. He/she says a lot of MSN Spaces blogs talking about Freezing Point have been blocked.
The blogger has now added to his blog title the URL for a proxy server which Chinese users can use to get through the blockage. Will that proxy server get blocked too? Probably, though there are always other ones for the user who is determined and tech-savvy enough. It seems that the Chinese internet using public must be gaining a greater awareness of proxy servers lately.
Not sure who this blogger is. Trying to find out.
Do you read "those" as applying to the communist party, or to microsoft?
Posted by: Adam | February 23, 2006 at 05:39 PM