China Blocks YouTube

YouTube's owner, the search engine giant Google, reports that its access in China began slowing several days ago and by now has been nearly completely blocked off. By early Wednesday, users inside of China encountered an error messages stating: "Network Timeout. The server at youtube.com is taking too long to respond."

When asked by foreign journalists about the restriction, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said he was unaware it, and further declared that China was not afraid of the Internet. "Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite.... We manage the Internet according to law ... to prevent the spread of harmful information."

Not The First Time

China seems to have an on-again/off-again history of internet restriction, dating most recently with the March 2008 riots in Tibet, and going back somewhat further to October 2007 when China apparently blocked off search engine giants Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

YouTube service allows users to upload and share videos, and has been banned on occasion in other countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Thailand. It has also been known to be shut down following the upload of content considered politically embarrassing to certain countries.

Reporter's Own Experience with Censorship in China

Former Shanghai expatriate John Melendez shares his experience with censorship and information monitoring in China:

"I lived in China in the mid-90s for several years and was witness to some hearsay, as well as some of the censorship activities the government took part in.

"A friend of mine related to me that on one trip to the Lidu Hotel in Beijing, she walked by a room guarded by a uniformed member of the Gong-An (China's Public Security Bureau). The door to the room was somewhat open, and while passing by she felt as if she had seen something odd, a feeling confirmed a few moments later.

"She told me that the guard seemed friendly enough, and when asked whether she could peek her head inside to see what was going on, the guard smiled broadly, opened the door wide and ushered her in with a most friendly gesture. She had stepped into a giant room filled with row upon row of tables upon which rested perhaps a hundred or more cassette recording machines.

"When she asked what the machines were for, the guard shamelessly said that they were for recording the telephone conversations conducted over the lines leased by foreign businesses renting office space in the building.

"On another occasion, in Shanghai, I remember hearing my conversations being monitored over my business phone line, especially for what few phone calls I made to the American Consulate."

"On yet another time, a freind of mine from Belgium was speaking his native Welsh tongue on the phone, when he was suddenly cut off and told by an unidentified caller to 'Speak English or you will be discoinnected'."

Says Melendez, "Most expatriates were aware of the monitoring, and took it as a de facto reality of living in China. Personally, I took no offense to it because I had I spoke nothing that I would later be ashamed of, and I had nothing negative to say about China to my fellow expatriates."