China Blocks YouTube Over Tibet Videos

BEIJING — Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.

The blocking added to the communist government's efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.

Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

There were no protest scenes posted on China-based video Web sites such as 56.com, youku.com and tudou.com.

The Chinese government has not commented on its move to prevent access to YouTube. Internet users trying to call up the Web site were presented with a blank screen.

Chinese leaders encourage Internet use for education and business but use online filters to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic.

Foreign Web sites run by news organizations and human rights groups are regularly blocked if they carry sensitive information. Operators of China-based online bulletin boards are required to monitor their content and enforce censorship.

China has at least 210 million Internet users, according to the government, and is expected to overtake the United States soon to have the biggest population of Web surfers.

Beijing tightened controls on online video with rules that took effect Jan. 30 and limited video-sharing to state-owned companies.

Regulators backtracked a week later, apparently worried they might disrupt a growing industry, and said private companies that were already operating legally could continue. They said any new competitors will be bound by the more stringent restrictions.

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On the Net:

Youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com

Comments

[dorothyinchina]

08:14 AM on 03/18/2008

I live in China, ,and I am constantly amazed at the level of China hate coming out of the US. When the Soviet Union fell, and the cold war was over, we needed someone to fill the hate vacuum and there was China. yes, CNN has been blacked out periodically for the past few days. But they can't block everything and i have found lots of info on Huffington (not blocked) and MSNBC (sometimes blocked.)
But do you really, truly believe the US doesn't do some of the same things? Do you really believe our human rights record (see Guantanamo) give us the right to point fingers?
I agree totally that the US has given China way too much economic power over us. We have mortgaged our country for cheap flip flops, and we have done it voluntarily. China did not force us. But think of this. We have absolutely nothing to fear from China, because they depend economically on their biggest customer. Walmart accounts for 2% of the entire economy here.
There is so much good in this country, but from across the ocean you only see the government. Many Chinese are the same way; they've never been to the US either, and they can only judge us by our government's actions. But the US should clean its own house before pointing fingers.

[browndog2]

12:47 PM on 03/18/2008

You don't live in China, you live in Communist China. Or did that small detail escape your memory. And to equate Terrorists captured in battle in a foreign country to a national policy of it's treatment and rights of it's own citizenry is a blatant cheap-shot. Yes all gorverments abuse their population to some degree,but ulike in China,we do not apologize for our governments bad behavior.

[JonStewart4President]

12:26 AM on 03/18/2008

China needs to be boycotted beyond the Olympics, which they should never have been given. What that country did to Tibet was shameful, as are the ways that they are trying to stamp out the Tibetan language in culture and having Chinese come and colonize it.

Of course the US did nothing to China then or now, because Tibet is too poor for them to care about. No oil or natural resources for us to care about.

And now of course, we can't and won't do anything because we owe too much money to the Chinese, our economy is in trouble as it is and course, we need to ship all our manufacturing over there to support bussinessmen here make larger profits.

But if the US actually did care about Justice, we would have gotten off our asses years ago and tried to get the Chinese out of Tibet. Of course we can't talk anymore about invading sovereign nations for no reason anymore, can we. Or about human right abuses with Gitmo and Abu Ghraib to our names.

Yeah, Dubya is the gift that just keeps on giving. Sorry people of Tibet. The world won't have your back. They're too worried about kissing China's ass.

[tsloan]

10:52 PM on 03/17/2008

I feel sure our lame president will do nothing to support the Tibetan people

[wonderingstar]

09:18 PM on 03/17/2008

China's changing very rapidly and despite the crackdown there is more cause overall for optimism than pessimism. Look at where things were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago, when China was comparable to North Korea. I visited China first in the 80's and things are so very different today, largely because of the openness China has shown. China has come a long, long way since then in opening up to ideas and people from outside, and has changed in many ways for the better. There are now more internet users in China than in the U.S. (http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/31/china-internet-usage-cx_nwp_0403china.html) and this for a country that ranks 104th in the world per capita income. If China is preparing itself to be more open, what will happen if no one attends its coming out party? Do you think the reaction from China will be, "oh-oh, we really goofed. The outside world was right and we were wrong. We so apologize. We promise to change." I don't think so. Embarrassments to China will cause hardliners to mistrust the outside world even more (the roots of such mistrust being the century-long foreign imperialist occupations beginning with the Opium War in the 1840s and ending only with the birth of the PRC in 1949) and slow progress. Peace follows understanding.

[thnk4self]

09:05 PM on 03/17/2008

If all this depresses you, read:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186753/

[thnk4self]

08:56 PM on 03/17/2008

W could not take a stand even if he were able to. Thanks to Bush the US is indebted to China for financing the Iraq War (10 billion/month) and mutual turn of the head regarding each country's actions in the 'war on terror." If the Bush administration will not act to prevent poisoned imports (food, phamaceuticals, toys), then it is unlikely anything but cheerleading will go on for the Olympics. Selling out America's values for short term, short-sighted gain.

[Magi91711]

04:46 PM on 03/17/2008

Forget the olympics. Every thoughtful INDIVIDUAL in the western world should boycott China. That means digging in our little pocketbooks and paying more for products from other countries. I will avoid a Chinese product every time I can, as I have done for the past decade, in protest over the horride human rights violations. If I can't find it, I usually do without.

The trouble with today's activists is they want to scribble endlessly on blogs, without committing to the smallest sacrifice. Carbon exchanges come to mind--what a bunch of bs.

[SevenSteps2Kevin]

03:28 PM on 03/17/2008

More proof that China is a totalitarian state and that we should never have let them get so close to our government or to our economy.

[MajorKong]

03:03 PM on 03/17/2008

That Chinese government is so nice I guess we should move more of our factories over there.

[chappelforpres]

02:38 PM on 03/17/2008

China's pathetic "finger in the dike while inserting head up butt" censorship efforts.

[gevan]

02:18 PM on 03/17/2008

Twenty-eight years ago Jimmy Carter pulled the U.S. out of the Moscow Olympics over the invasion of Afghanistan. Will this President take a stand on our participation in the Beijing Olympics? George W. Bush?

[Bright Creature]

03:32 PM on 03/17/2008

The Dalai Llama said that he wants the Beijing Olympics to go forward, so that the Chinese can be "confronted."

I'm not really sure of his reasoning but it was interesting that he thought so.