Friday, October 27, 2006

blocked again


Once again I find myself on the wrong side of the Chinese censors. Blogspot has been blocked again in China, so if I look for my blog or any other on blogspot I get the above message. It's only been a matter of months since the site was unblocked but these things tend to fluctuate as the Chinese government often uses a let-out-the-reigns-pull-in-the reigns approach to new liberties whether civil or economic. Blogger obviously failed its trial period. As it happens fairly soon after Blogger became accessible a Chinese professor alerted Chinese netizens to an excretable blog written by an expat teacher about his sexual conquests of female Chinese students from his English class, sparking a web-wide hunt. As this was a Blogger blog I personally wonder if this is connected with Blogger's return to web pariah status.

But obviously, you can still post on blogger, you just can't read the blogs themselves- a strange sort of compromise you often find here, a sort of third way that suits the ultimate agenda (no reading) while giving concessions (you can still blog, just not to a Chinese audience).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"you can still post on blogger, you just can't read the blogs themselves" Demonstrating how little I know about world religions, I'm tempted to say how Zen that sounds, kinda like the blogging equivalent of one-hand clapping. Is that appropriate for China?

(By the way, rein...)

i see what you mean said...

its sort of dadaist exercise isn't it? You can write but no-one can read. but really the implication is, you foreigners can write away, and your foreign audience can read it but we just don't want this available for Chinese readers. Frankly though, in reality this site being blocked is something that matters more for foreigners as China has its own blog sites which are very popular and there are only a few chinese language bloggers on Blogger, so it feels to me more like an exercise in limiting outside presence/influences. after the China Bounder episode they now have something to back that up too.

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