WTF?! Why Is Our Website Censored in China?
China is the very fast growing economy. China will host the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games this year. And China’s digital advertising revenues are increasing at dazzling pace. So coming months, I will focus at China several times.
China, a country notorious for censoring the Internet. Touted as having some of the most sophisticated firewalls in the world, greatfirewallofchina.org lets you check if you can pass China’s strict IP monitors. For brands that focus at expanding to the Chinese market, it’s very important to check if your website is available or censored in China.
The Chinese government began blocking access to the popular blogging site LiveJournal, cutting off its citizens from the roughly 1.8 million blogs the service hosts. Read more at Nextlust or at Wired. And please let our community know if your website is blocked or available in China! Let our readers know what trends you expect in or from China this year…
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Marc January 20th, 2008 at 05:31
Don’t believe everything your read Igor. I am reading your website from China (without a proxy), and there is no problem whatsoever. It is true that China regularly blocks access to certain sites, but people outside China actually care more about it than the Chinese themselves. Over 95% of all Chinese never visits foreign sites, and the remaining 5% uses a proxy in case a site is blocked. Once you are used to that it’s no big deal.
By the way, the news about LiveJournal that you are referring to was from March last year already, not from last Friday.
Daan Jansonius January 20th, 2008 at 17:28
But it is completely ridiculous you should have to get used to that!
People didn’t miss airplanes when they didn’t exist either, or cars, or electricity….
Marc January 21st, 2008 at 01:38
Sure it’s ridiculous, but that does not mean that many people care about it. All the information they want to have is available to them, it’s not that they don’t know what’s happening outside China (which is what the foreign media are still trying to tell, but that changed 10-20 yrs ago). Therefore the comparison with airplanes etc. is not right. China basically has its own internet that not many people from abroad visit (because it’s all in Chinese), and therefore most people in China do not visit sites outside China. This has nothing to do with censorship, as the foreign media try to let us believe, but it’s because they prefer their own sites. Just like the Dutch mainly read Dutch newspaper sites and nu.nl, instead of the NYTimes.
Igor Beuker January 21st, 2008 at 01:44
@ Marc & Daan
Isn’t the Chinese government sponsoring/investing in teens to help them learn English? Will that drive more chinese teens towards foreign websites coming years more often?
It seems in South Korea/China/Russia that Internet has brought an opening to get out of the censoring every now and then?
Cheers
Marc January 21st, 2008 at 03:31
@Igor
Correct, more and more people are learning English, and this will certainly lead to more usage of foreign sites. But never as much as Europeans use US sites. The Chinese have their own sites for everything, so there is no real need to go to US sites.
The censoring will likely get less over time anyway. It is used as a tool to keep a ‘harmonious society’, but I wonder if anything would change if they would just give access to all sites. Young people here don’t really care about politics, they are happy with their lives, and don’t feel like they are missing out on anything.
Daan Jansonius January 21st, 2008 at 11:38
Thanks for the explanation Marc, interesting insight!
Hervé Maas January 22nd, 2008 at 09:39
http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org, 403: Forbidden hahahahah
Thats just awsome!
niels a February 5th, 2008 at 17:24
An interesting read on this topic:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10608655