A commenter, Nick Wong, reports that The Useless Tree is blocked in China. I looked back at the geographic data and, indeed, my hits from China have dropped significantly in the last few days. Nick believes that all Typepad blogs are affected. I notice, further, that the 88s (who uses Blogsome) and Granite Studio ( who uses Blogspot) are also running into the Great Firewall. Seems like a comprehensive CCP attack against foreign bloggers.
Can anyone provide more information on this?
If it is true, it is pathetic. I am critical of the Chinese government and party from time to time, as must naturally be the case for any free thinker, but, really, if my ruminations are seen as a threat to the power of the party-state, then that party-state lives in paranoia and fear. Lasting power is confident and open power, not afraid of simple conversation and exchange. As long as the party-state struggles to stifle difference and debate, it's power is frail and shallow.
Mr. Hu, if you really believe what you say about serving the people and building China into a great power, then don't waste precious resources blocking blogs.
Mr. Hu, tear down this Wall!
UPDATE: I must credit Richard, The Peking Duck, with coining the line: "Mr Hu, tear down this wall."
I was pretty amazed at the amount of information I couldn't access from a computer while in China. What amazes me is that I can't imagine that China can possibly hope to keep this information firewall up and running. It's like trying to hit a very fast moving target -- one that moves faster and faster each day. I have no doubt that they have countless people trying to track the web for "questionable" sites all the time, but my guess is that as time goes on this will be less and less successful. Not that I am that knowledgeable about the technology at all (I'm not), but I just can't imagine that it's not going to be, more and more, a hopeless endeavor for them.
Posted by: Chris | June 23, 2007 at 10:33 PM
Looks like paranoia and fear for now. All of typepad is blocked here in Guiyang. More sites for the proxy list...
Posted by: Daniel | June 23, 2007 at 11:38 PM
Yep, all typepad is blocked here in Beijing, and I had to use anonymouse to get here.
Sam, I have a copyright on the last line of your post.
Posted by: richard | June 24, 2007 at 01:36 AM
Sorry, html got screweed up: http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/000114.php
Posted by: richard | June 24, 2007 at 01:47 AM
Yep, we've all been blocked for about a week now. Not good.
Posted by: China Law Blog | June 24, 2007 at 03:28 AM
Hard to respect any country that can only keep social harmony (and maintain a dictatorship) not through ideas but by withholding them to keep the population stupid.
Posted by: Keir | June 24, 2007 at 06:13 PM