China Blocks Access To New York Times Web Site

BEIJING — China has blocked access to the New York Times Web site, the newspaper said Saturday, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.

Computer users who logged on in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou received a message that the site was not available when they tried to connect on Friday morning, the paper said. Some users were cut of as early as Thursday evening, it said.

The Web site remained inaccessible from Beijing Saturday.

It was not clear if the move was meant to block specific content on the newspaper's Web site or if it was a return to stricter censorship of the Internet in general. Beijing loosened some media and Internet controls during the 2008 Summer Olympics _ gestures that were meant to show the international community that the games had brought greater freedom to the Chinese people.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said they do not deal with Web sites. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates the Internet, could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao defended China's right to censor Web sites that have material deemed illegal by the government, saying that other countries regulate Internet usage too.

During the August games, China allowed access to long-barred Web sites such as the British Broadcasting Corp. and Human Rights Watch after an outcry from foreign reporters who complained that Beijing was failing to live up to its pledges of greater media freedom.

The New York Times said Beijing had blocked the Chinese-language Web site of the BBC, and Web sites of Voice of America, Asiaweek, and Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, earlier in the week. But apart from Ming Pao the sites were all accessible Friday, it said.

Ming Pao's online site was still inaccessible Saturday in Beijing.

China has the most online users in the world with more than 250 million, but it has also put in place a sophisticated system to police Web sites for sensitive material and routinely blocks sites that support Tibetan independence or the region's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, told the paper that there did not appear to be a technical issue. Users in Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S. were also not experiencing difficulties, the paper said.

Comments

[harriettubman]

I've talked to quite a few people who attended the Olympics and China wants to hide the truth from their people and the truth from the world. Before the olympics, they built walls so the world couldn't see their slums; removed any signs of homelessness; taught their rude people how to be nice on the subway; used special digital affects for much of the opening ceremonies where viewers were told it was all electronic.

Where is the outrage with this country over:
1) Poisoned dog food
2) Poisoned food
3) Tainted toys
4) Poisoned formula
5) Poisoned medicine and so much more???????

We should no longer be importing this stuff. The FDA isn't protecting us, we need to protect ourselves.

Mattlel issued a stern warning one day and took it back the next. Was that political or did someone threaten them?

[KataVideo]

Oh No! Now the Chinese People can't see the NYT getting fooled by a hoax letter claiming to be from the Mayor of Paris!

[Tulka2]

Take the red pill or the blue one, my Chinese friends.

[djgonebad]

HERE'S ANOTHER STORY: "Republican IT Specialist Dies In Plane Crash"- DEMOCRACY NOW!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g5SfpcjssM&feature=channel

[RushBinLimbaugh]

Rove slaps himself on the forehead.

[hortonhearsawho2]

Gee, what next 10 yr old olympians?

[DCato]

Any organization that antagonizes both Bush and the Chinese government must be doing something right.

[stunsitfel]

At least they will be spared having to read that Bush caused the mortgage meltdown.

[PSTEN]

Surprising! I was in Dalian in September and had access to NYT at that time. I would also check on several blogs and I think Huffington post as well. This is not a good sign. But I was told by the family I stayed with that the restrictions had been lifted on alot of sites around the time of the Olympics.

[Toker]

We need to neutralize China and Russia before they become to powerful. We need another world war. The victor(s) would then shape the rest of the twenty-first century.

[ibsteve2u]

You're looking for www.newamericancentury.org, not the HuffPo.

The former is where they plan world domination without having the brains or the backbone to accomplish it; HuffPo is where people come to stop the neocons from hurting themselves - and the rest of the world - too badly.

[Toker]

That's strange I always thought the HuffPo was a news site. Does the HuffPo have it's own military? Are you going to have the same attitude towards the Obama Administration when they confront Russia and China?

[LMPE]

If I'm ever dictator of a country, I'll block access to Fox Noise. I suspect that China's gov already does, given the station's likely anti-Cuban bias (China always sides with Cuba in international affairs). It's not every country that cooperates with both US corporations and Cuba's leadership.

[LiarLiarIraqsOnFire]

One more reason for the Bush administration to be jealous of the Chineese government.

[fromNina]

go on!

[julianne]

This is the political leadership in China. But it is the amoral financial, industrial, and political elites in the U.S. who sold out the American people, vast sectors of our economy and tens of millions of craft jobs and now white collar jobs to China. They didn't want to do "trade" in our own hemisphere and throughout the world in a manner that would support (mutual) progress and the security of the United States. No, they wanted to gut our country in their pathological hyper-globalism to fill their coffers. The big bank bailouts along with Obama's recent economic appointments will takeg us nowhere. We need to isolate and destroy this institutionalized disease, not revive it and attempt to mitigate it while we continue to have to experience its destructive consequences.

[zizyphus]

Right!

[fromNina]

i meant to say "go on" to julianne - opps!

[BaileyWo]

Hey I just learned a word you can't get through the cn-zor bot: the word is phash - is - m.

Bad Word! Can't say that in the same sentence with the names of people currently in office.

[howdidoodi]

huh! I can't even get words like mod er ate through!

[AlinaM]

Maybe we should consider an embargo till preconditions are met....