July 11th, 2008 | 
Author: As I’ve mentioned a few times before, my husband’s job requires him to travel frequently, at least one week of every other month, usually to places in Asia, although he’s also been to England, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Australia… Well, you get the idea. This time he’s in China, and trying to access my blog to no avail (he’s my one sure reader). After quite a few failed attempts, and noticing that there didn’t seem to be any problems to access the blog on this side, I asked him to try a few other typepad blogs. No luck either! A quick search on Google took me to this blog: RC Conversations, by Rebecca MacKinnon. In a blog post from June 2005, she explains how all or at least most of typepad blogs have been blocked in China, apparently for political reasons, even if they don’t talk about China or its government at all! According to her post, no blogs from Typepad would be able to be seen, unless you are reading them using some proxy server, because even some readers and feed burners were blocked. And it seems it wasn’t only Typepad, but other blog-hosting services as well, such as Blogger and Blogspirit. OK, so that was June 2005… I wonder if what my hubby is experiencing while trying to access my blog from China is anywhere related to that massive blog blockage or if it’s related to the most recent internet crack-down measurements taken for the Olympic games, as detailed in this article by the Global Voices Advocacy. Either way, it’s sad, isn’t it? I don’t even talk about China in this blog! All I want is to share about SolidWorks with them! Oh, well…
Posted in Other stuff
The internet is severely restricted in China. We’ve had Chinese vendors visit, and they don’t even know what Google is. Government control…
Thanks for the comment, Mark!
Given all the business China has with companies in the US, I would’ve never imagined this kind of thing was going on. It was a real shock to find out just how restricted it is!
I am hoping that once the world gets there next month, there will be no stopping the free flow of information
Thanks for the comment, Kudzu! Are you in China at the moment? Can you see all typepad blogs from where you are? My husband is in a place called Qingdao. He tells me security is pretty tight right now because it seems one of the events of the olympic games will take place there. Hope you enjoy the games!
Nice post. Some very interesting points to think about. It would be great, if you’re interested, to share this at http://www.iloho.com. It’s an online tool for travelers where you can post the best travel news and articles on the web and then vote for your favorites.