China's 'Wall Goes Back Up

Sam Gustin writes: With the 2008 Beijing Olympics fading into memory, China has resumed its widespread practice of blocking access to what it calls "illegal" websites -- a practice it halted amid the international attention associated with the Summer Games.

In particular, China is blocking access to websites that do not conform to Chinese policy that Taiwan is an inseparable part of the country. Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that such websites violate Chinese law, according to a report in the New York Times.

The paper quotes Rebecca MacKinnon, an internet expert at Hong Kong University and former CNN journalist, as saying that China's Web censorship has increased recently. "It does appear that in the last week a lot of things got reblocked that were unblocked during the Olympics," MacKinnon said.

Among other websites affected, the BBC said that its Chinese language site, BBCChinese.com, which had been accessible as all eyes turned to China ahead of the Olympics, had recently been censored. Asiaweek and Voice of America websites were also affected.

"It has been a source of great regret that audiences in China are unable to access BBCChinese.com as the rest of the world can," the BBC said, according to the Associated Press. "We will endeavor to continue working with the Chinese authorities to improve access for our Chinese-speaking audiences in China."

China's totalitarian government has a long history of blocking internet content that it deems threatening. Although it assured Olympic organizers that it would relax web restrictions during the Games, many sites remained blocked throughout the event, while others were allowed.

Media advocates condemned China's latest Web censorship.

"It's clear that China has no intention of fulfilling the hopes it raised when it was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games that the Chinese media universe would enter a period of expansion," Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement. "Instead, all we have seen is a continuation of the same
narrow policies of official resistance and restriction of foreign and local media."

China recently surpassed the United States in Internet use, with over 250 million citizens online.