China Blocks Access to Websites & Blogs for Olympic Games

blogspot-china-blockedChina has blocked access to all Blogger blogs ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games that begin in Beijing three months from now.

We conducted connectivity tests using three different nodes in China and none of them could connect to blogspot blogs.

Test I: Timeout while connecting to a Blogger blog from Shanghai.

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Test II: No response when a blogspot site was pinged from Shanghai, China

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Test III: Blogspot Website could not be accessed from Beijing, China.

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The International Olympic Committee recently asked China to open "Internet" during the duration of 2008 Olympics but with this restriction put on Blogger, it is pretty clear that the 30,000 journalists covering the Olympics event will have a hard time getting to their favorite websites and blogs while they are inside the "Great Firewall of China."

The news that Bloggers blogs are inaccessible in China was twittered by Carsten Ullrich, a researcher in Shanghai and got confirmed by Graham Webster, a journalist in Beijing.

If you plan to be in Beijing for the Olympic games, here’s how to read Blogger Blogs inside China and access other restricted sites.

Related: How to Know Everything about a Website

Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/china-blocks-blogger-blogs-beijing-olympic-games/3147/

web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org


Reader Comments

My Wordpress blog (gusleig.com) is also not pinging. But Im hosted in my own domain…

In China,we have to submit our sites and personal infomation to Ministry of Infomation Industry of PRC and wait their censor for almost 1 month(or even longer) until we can launch.If there is any uncomfortable content on the site,they will just block the IP and contact us for removing them.

Blogger has been blocked in China for a long long time,not from now.

I’m in China now. I was publishing my blog at blogspot.com with no problems until yesterday. now “timed out” Outrageous is what I say. Still repressive after all these years, I guess.

Is this only for blogger.com ? how about wordpress and typepad ?

Blogspot in on and off all the time. It was blocked for months, then unblocked, now blocked again… not sure whether this time it is related to the Olympics.
Thanks for mentioning me in your post. First time I broke some news!

Amit,
This is I think due to growing agitations from Tibet against China..Blog is a great source for sharing thoughts for tibetians..but I dont think so this can stop Tibetians.There are many ways to do it…But I agree that i can be stopped substantially..

I think China fear about sex and politic ^_^

Anybody use “Google Earth” recently???

If not, Fly to Beijing in China and read the “Every Human has Rights” poster!! It’s great!
Probably hacked in by someone and they don’t even know about it. By the time this message gets out, it may be gone, but I took snapshots of it and have the jpegs…

Andy

Communist China is such a disgrace for its long famous history of many thousands of years. So great and beautiful country and people, but so terribly bad and criminal leadership. (If I would have said that in China, I would have gone to prison or been shot)
One day, even China is going to change to better.

Prayers for the dead

Blessings for the living

Angel blessings for the wounded souls of Tibet, Burma, and China

Lord, open the hearts of the rulers of men and let them reach out toward both their own people

and the people of the world with open hands and open hearts.

I’m a photoblogger. They even banned pixelpost!! =/

Okay I just figured out that my website is blocked in Chinese mainland. Fine, but WHY? I never published any negative word about China as a country or it’s politics. NEVER. And I would never do so. The objective of my website is just to inform people about my life; travels I made, and interests. I checked the list of banned keywords and yes, I used “Tiamen Square” a couple of times, just because I’ve been there twice, and “Forbidden City” maybe too. If these or other normal words are blocked, then almost every innocent webmaster is influenced by these regulations. I even can’t update my website anymore!

So if I delete al the banned words from my website, it will be available again? Or once on the black list, always on the black list?

It’s unfair.

Hi Liang,

Very unfair, but the world of George Orwell is here and now and unfair is not in their vocabulary. I posted back in May of this year and said that Google Earth had a “Every Human Has Rights” link at Beijing. Lo and Behold! It is now gone. Google has sold their souls for “20 pieces of Silver”

Fortunately, I took a snapshot and have it saved as a jpeg. It was of an individual named Li Dan and his advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS in China.

Sadly, Google has Kow-Towed to the thugs in China.

Funny, had the Chinese Government policed the dairy industry as strictly as it does the Internet, 4 children would still be alive and 50 thousand plus others wouldn’t have kidney stones… (not that funny, really).

Andy

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