China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

Well, at least we know the article is telling the truth now.

One of the differences between India and China seems to be that in India at least, there's a free 4th estate, and there is no way a Government would be able to block articles like this.<p>As a matter of fact, through the Right To Information Act, there's an activist who is currently raking up dirt on a whole bunch of politicians serially.<p>Makes me thankful of the freedoms we enjoy and take for granted!

So, combining these two statements, it seems that they blocked both sites 30 minutes <i>before</i> the article was posted in Chinese?<p>If that's true, it's disappointing the Times didn't do a simultaneous release in anticipation of the block.<p>"<i>HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access Friday morning to the English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The New York Times</i>"<p>"<i>By 7 a.m. Friday in China, access to both the English- and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times was blocked (...). The Times had posted the article in English at 4:34 p.m. on Thursday in New York (4:34 a.m. Friday in Beijing), and finished posting the article in Chinese three hours later after the translation of final edits to the English-language version.</i>"

It happens in pockets of the US, too: Jerry Falwell's conservative Liberty University did a very similar thing.<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/falwells-liberty-university-blocks-newspaper-web-site/2011/04/13/AFLYNJXD_blog.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/fal...</a><p>EDIT: mircocosm was a poor word choice

I'm not sure what's worse: People thinking that Chinese nationals do not care, that they are unaware, or perhaps both. Most of the people that I know in China, who are at all, remotely informed about anything knows not to get their news from regular news channels. Particularly anyone skilled enough to setup a Weibo account. Within minutes, most news gets out anyways via Weibo (Chinese Twitter)...<p>In fact it was two of my Chinese friends who told me about the article this morning....

Can someone post a mirror or the content of the article? I'm in China.

Now I m anxiously waiting for one written for Vietnam. I lived there for a few years and the 2 countries closely resemble each other

Looks like its no longer blocked in China... <a href="http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=www.nytimes.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=www.ny...</a>

China blocked Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's sites two years ago when the Nobel commitee awarded Liu Xiaobo the peace prize.

Honestly, I didn't really see much wrongdoing on part of the leadership, namely Wen Jiabao, as described in the article. Its mostly relatives taking advantage of political connections. Its a broken system, where the state is too closely intertwined with business. Hopefully the rumors are true and the new ruling coalition will make some progress in liberalizing the economy modeling it after Singapore's.

I was reading that article last night thinking... this is gonna get blocked.

So it has been, so it always will be. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The Times should not just only be blocked in China. Serious.

Loving the racist comments on HN these days.

I just want to say ... 呵呵

The truly sad part of this is most Chinese people wouldn't really mind the site being blocked because of this, nor even be all that surprised to learn what the article said. They don't get offended and angered by their government hiding things from them or abusing their power in the same way people in Western countries do, nor do they have a strong desire to learn the truth. They just accept this as the way things are.<p>Yes, there are exceptions, but those who feel different are in the minority.