Foreign search engines briefly redirected on some Chinese ISP's = mass confusion under heaven.

The more time you spend observing the Chinese internet, the more you learn (usually the hard way) not to jump to conclusions until you've triple-checked your facts with people on the ground in more than one location using more than one ISP, and - if possible - waited for a bit to see how things play out. 

I'm in London at the moment. On Thursday as I went from conference call to appointment to meeting to dinner to conference call, I kept getting e-mails from people about news reports and blog posts with headlines like "Chinese search engines hijacked" and "Cyberwar: China Declares War on Western Search Engines"  Then on Friday morning PC World reported: "China Not Redirecting Search-Engine Traffic to Baidu," and I even got an e-mail from somebody in Shanghai posting to a list-serv for people studying the Chinese Internet insisting that the whole hijacking story was a hoax.

The truth, it appears, lies in a murky grey area - as is often the case with China stories. But there is no doubt  that at certain points in time, on certain Internet Service Providers in at least some Chinese cities, real people were redirected to Baidu when they tried to access some foreign search engines. We know this happened because some Chinese bloggers documented it, and other people e-mailed screenshots around. We also know that the redirection must have been fairly short-lived, and may not have happened at all on some ISPs in some cities, because many people in China who I asked about it said all was normal when they tried accessing Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft search engines (as long as they didn't try to search politically sensitive terms, which for China is the normal state of things).

But it definitely happened. In the wee hours of Thursday October 18th, "icebenny" provided these screenshot from Shanghai, showing how Google Blogsearch was first redirected to the government's official anti-pornography site... then after he refreshed a few times it redirected to Baidu:

I've received screenshots from others showing the same thing. Here is a screenshot I received from one blogger showing how Microsoft's Live.com search page was also redirected to the government anti-porn site:

Blogger "Ning" wrote later that morning Beijing time that every time he tried to search anything on live.com, he would be redirected to Baidu's search error page, and when he tried searching on yahoo.com, or blogsearch.google.cn, he would be directed to Baidu's home page.  In a blog post titled "Baidu raped yahoo?" "jifforever" posted a screen-capture animation demonstrating how his yahoo.com search got redirected to Baidu. "Awflasher" showed the results of his test when he pinged blogsearch.google.com. He expressed concern that such DNS hijacking behavior is bad for the development of China's internet. The comments sections on all of these blog posts showed that many people had observed similar things.

What actually happened??  One Chinese friend offered this theory: "Just guess: the DNS hijacking was done by the ISP like China Telecom or Netcom either deliberately or accidentally. In some circumstances it leads to the Baidu page because it was set up as the default search engine." Another wrote: "most of the geekers think it is [caused] by a upgrade of GFW." (What he means there is that the ISP's periodically "tweak" and "upgrade" the filtering mechanism that block various overseas websites. Sometimes when a tweak is in progress, strange things happen for brief periods of time.)  It would appear that Danny Sullivan's theory that the hijacking was a response to Bush's meeting with the Dalai Lama may have been a bit prematurely formulated. But he is right to be on the defensive against those who now claim his entire report was false.

Meanwhile, while I'm on the subject of confirming and debunking various things, it is definitely true based on many consistent reports that YouTube is blocked in China. One verbal report I received yesterday from somebody that YouTube was blocked in Hong Kong, however, is definitely not true.

Comments

[mahathir_fan]

I wonder, your posting stated that one blogger had theorized that China Telecom or Netcom is involved in this DNS hijacking. Can bloggers just go theorizing like this without fear of being sued in China?

For one, it would be extremely unfair if they were innocent.

Also, the animation screenshot is not very convincing. Can you post a real video? The animation screen shot look like something that can be animated intentionanly. Would be better to carry a video into an internet cafe, and show that every computer accessed in the cafe has this DNS hijacking symtom.

I hope China Telecom or Netcom will get their lawyers together to sue this accusing blogger.

Then the blogger will be able to show his evidence in the court of law.

[cat]

Youtube is definitely blocked, while Blogspot is enjoying one of its brief windows of availability. But Bullog has now disappeared! I hope this last one is just a temporary technical glitch.

[Mitchell]

Yes, youtube is now blocked in the PRC. When it might return is anybody's guess. Blockage of this site and others switch on and off for reasons that are unclear, but we can speculate that it has to do with 'unacceptable' content or the timing with the recent 17th party congress. I think that this might simply be done to minimize the use of the internet into nothing more than watching movies, getting musicfiles, and chatting.

[kailing]

Yeap, youtube is out, and also flicker sometimes. Blogger now seems to be on... is so funny surfing in China... you never know how the wind and the waves will be that day, or if they will be sharks roaming around,mmm... I miss it when I travel abroad, that dull outside internet world... always sure you can surf without problems.

It is interesting that according to my research, everytime there is something happening in China that means many foreign media here Blogspot becomes usable for that period of time... mere coincidence?

[MAC]

I have been having a LOT of problems with foreign sites since about a week before the Congress opened, and I don't know if it means anything or not. A lot of what I've been experiencing hasn't been typical GFW trademarks; I'll have sites that are just unusably slow for no reason that I can see. Also, supporting the "GFW upgrade" theory, it seems that ONLY the most recent post in Richard Spencer's blog ("Congress is Potempkin Politics") is blocked, something you don't see too often.

[mahathir_fan]

This is so sad.

I use youtube a lot to provide evidence to support my points.

For example, I use youtube to prove that nobody died on Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989.

See minute 5:50:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=igsW5yQ6428

Also, I have recently used youtube to prove that Jesus Christ is nothing but a Sun God. It is a fake religion.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NgJIt_sxWcw

A lot of Chinese may not understand the second clip. I recommend downloading the English subtitle file and using a tool like babelfish to translate it to Chinese.

Please China, remove censorship of youtube so that Chinese society can move into the age of scientific era and throw away our superstituous beliefs.

Mao was right about religion and its time the truth gets out. Unblock youtube! We do not have to be afraid of the truth because we are the Truth!

[Steve]

This isn't new -- it was happening to me occasionally when I was in Dalian this summer. Maybe once every three days or so I'd get Baidu's home page when I tried to go to google.com. Slightly annoying but not really difficult to get around with a bit of technical proficiency.

[Meggy]

Wikipedia is blocked, too.
The country has their reasons to block western websites...