China Blocking Google.cn

[Curiosity]

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060203ChinaBlockingGoogleChina.html

China Blocking Google China
David A. Utter
Staff Writer
Published: 2006-02-03

Despite acceding to Beijing's censorship requirements, which yielded Google access to the Chinese market, users of Google.cn in China found the site blocked at the government backbone server.

Poor Google. Their stock has been hammered downward after missing market expectations on earnings, and they have received no end of grief from all quarters over their long-delayed entry into the Chinese market. Now even that has been problematic.

Instead of the higher quality service Google expected to provide by having servers handle traffic for the censored Google.cn site, Internet users in the populous cities of Beijing and Shanghai found nothing but 404 - Page Not Found for that address, Forbes reported.

Traceroutes conducted from Shanghai confirmed that packets were being lost once they hit the Internet backbone connection in China, the article said. That generally means the government has blocked a site. Shanghai could still reach Google.com in the US, though.

Tom's Hardware Guide observed that a basic flaw in the filtering could be the reason for the Google.cn blockage, presumably once Chinese censors discovered it:

"... recent demonstrations revealed that retrieved items are only filtered when the items being searched for are spelled correctly - that is, using Roman letters.

That seems to be the case. A test of one keyphrase at Google.cn that should be on the censored list returned a list of results that were very obviously pro-government in nature. After changing a single letter in the keyphrase and trying it again, the results were very different, and certainly ones that would have the information officers spraying green tea out of their noses.

 

[Machjo]

Hmmm... I just accessed Google.

 

[Machjo]

I'm sorry; did my post above kill this thread?

 

[Finder]

So whats goofle.cn like?

 

[Machjo]

So whats goofle.cn like?

Pretty much the same as it is in Canada, except that the more politically sensitive pages won't open when I click on them

But as for not being accessible, I just used it I don't know how many times today.

So I'm just curious where the writer of the original article in this thread got the idea that it was completely blocked.

 

[Finder]

Tell me, can you look up something like Maoist Party?
I hear that Left wing decidents are just as repressed as Democratic and right wing.

 

[Machjo]

http://www.sholajawid.org/
Yes!

http://rmp.maoism.ru/
Yes!

http://www.cpnm.org/new/English/english_index.htm
Yes!

I assume you're referring to a Chinese Maoist party? If so, I can't see it if I search Google using the English phrase "Maoist Party". If such a party exists in China, either it doesn't have a website, it's website isn't availabe in English, it just appears a few pages further than I cared to look, or some other factor.

Just let me know the site, and I can try to access it from here and let you know whether or not it is accessible.

 

[Finder]

Na I was just wondering if those would come up. I can't remember the Communist disitents orginization which was in the papers here which was rounded up and repressed.

How about this.

Unified Communist party of Nepal
Maoist Party of Nepal
Maoist rebels Nepal



What have you found so far to be blocked? Anything odd?

 

[Machjo]

http://www.korea-dpr.com/
Yes!

Perhaps you had something like this in mind:
http://www.saag.org/\papers16\paper1565.html
I could access that too.

 

[Finder]

Re: RE: China Blocking Google.cn

http://www.korea-dpr.com/
Yes!

Perhaps you had something like this in mind:
http://www.saag.org/\papers16\paper1565.html
I could access that too.

your kidding me! Naaa I had something in mind of grass root socialists who are not happy with the Chiness government. Not Stalinists. But thats really odd and interesting. Thanks. You'd think that would be a site they would let ppl on. lol


edit:
Try the Cuban Communist parties website.

 

[Machjo]

I can access this too:

http://www.internationalism.org/

From my experience, they usually only sensor things which are particularly political for China specifically. Wikipedia has been banned for the last few weeks, but that on es a mystery to me; is there anything particularly sensitive there? Have you read anything on your side relating to Wiki in China? It's frustrating because Wikipedia has good resourses sometimes.

Oh well.

 

[Machjo]

"Try the Cuban Communist parties website."

What's the URL?

 

[Finder]

Re: RE: China Blocking Google.cn

I can access this too:

http://www.internationalism.org/

From my experience, they usually only sensor things which are particularly political for China specifically. Wikipedia has been banned for the last few weeks, but that on es a mystery to me; is there anything particularly sensitive there? Have you read anything on your side relating to Wiki in China? It's frustrating because Wikipedia has good resourses sometimes.

Oh well.

Thats the thing. Wiki can be edited by anyone and anyone can say anything. So well... I can see why the Chiness Government might chose to ban it. I'm shocked they would ban the North Korean website.

Also my personal belief on wiki is it's a good tool but as for a resource.... It can tend to be too opinionated at times. I guess if you work on the notion that millions edit it it should be blaanced but I've seen many reports on it just missing the right information at times.

 

[Machjo]

Oh no, everything under which I typed yes is accessible.

 

[Machjo]

Of course in less spoken languages I can access a wealth of information, but I won't post them here; no point helping the sensors!

 

[Machjo]

http://www.kmt.org.tw/
Taiwan Nationalist Party
No!

 

[Machjo]

http://www.unpo.org/
No!

http://www.uygur.org/
No!

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/cn-islam.html
Yes? Now that's odd.

http://www.tibet.org/Resources/TSG/Groups/allied.committee.html
No!

http://www.greens.org/s-r/13/13-06.html
Yes? I'm surprised they never sensored this one too.

etc.

As I'd mentionned before, their sensorship is odd at times, in terms of what I can and can't sensor. I'm guessing it can have to do with many factors, including staff shortages at the "sensorship" ministry along with misspellings, pgf formats (sensors can only filter words, not pictures of words), etc.

But again, the real key to access to information around these parts is to know less spoken foreign languages.

 

[Finder]

hehe, yeah the great government of China, One country, two systems (Communism and Capitalism) and yet little democracy. IDAE had a good article awhile ago on the possibility of the Chiness Communist spliting into two and the left wing turning into a social democratic party which would most likely do reforms much like the party in mongolia did. I think thats the best chance for the CCP and China to go into the 21st centruy.

 

[Machjo]

hehe, yeah the great government of China, One country, two systems (Communism and Capitalism) and yet little democracy. IDAE had a good article awhile ago on the possibility of the Chiness Communist spliting into two and the left wing turning into a social democratic party which would most likely do reforms much like the party in mongolia did. I think thats the best chance for the CCP and China to go into the 21st centruy.

I would have to disagree.

From my observations in China, it is not ready for democracy yet, and it would be preferable for all foreingers to keep their noses out of the Chinese political system altogether. Sure I post things here critical of the CCP at times, but it's still preferable to have a CCP government over anarchy.