Is Your Website Blocked in China?
By Dyske January 23rd, 2010
One of my favorite financial blogs, Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis, today had a post about the censorship in China. It says his site is blocked in China. I then became curious how one could check which sites are blocked by the Chinese government. I found two methods. Just Ping checks access to your site from 40 different places in the whole world, including Shanghai, China. I then found another tool that checks just China, called “Website Test behind the Great Firewall of China” by WebsitePulse. I have no idea how reliable these tools are, but it’s amusing to try them out.
Both sites show that Facebook is blocked in China. As claimed, Mish’s site is indeed blocked in China according to these sites. Now that I’m discussing the very subject of censorship in China here, I wonder if my site would get blocked too. That would be sort of cool. It would give me bragging rights. I would design a little seal that says, “Blocked in China” and put it on every page.
I wonder what I would have to write about in order to get blocked. The most obvious candidate is Tiananmen Square. Or perhaps, Dalai Lama. I actually don’t like him, but I would write a post about his greatness just for the sake of getting blocked. I would imagine that they must have automated bots that scan websites for certain keywords. So, it’s probably just a matter of using words like “Tiananmen Square” many times on your site. (Yes, “Tiananmen Square”) And, your site would probably get blocked automatically without any human intervention. That would be my guess.
So, let’s wait and see. Tiananmen Square. Love Dalai Lama.
Frank Luo says:
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:52 pmI once wrote a reply to a blog run by two of my friends, registered with Sina.com, and it was blocked. The reply was about the New York CIty mayoral election — completely free of anything to do with China. So elections in general seem to be a sore topic for the mainlanders. That might be a good place to start — call for free elections in China (at this time there are elections, but communist party membership is required to stand for elections, and the candidates are — you guessed it — usually selected by the party itself).
Subsequently, however, my friend posted the text of my reply (I often write it out in notepad before I put it up, and I sent her a copy) as a blog posting, and it was allowed to appear. It seems that there are stricter standards for anonymous postings (I didn’t wnt to register with Sina and so it appeared under the “Guest” account name). That they make this distinction is actually kind of scary — they block things they don’t like, but will allow a little extra latitude as long as they know who you are. Hmm.
Dyske says:
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:55 pmI see. So, they might not block this site, but they might block me if I ever try to go to China. That could be a problem, as I would love to go to China one day.
pepper says:
January 28th, 2010 at 6:01 amI am in China and I could still write comment here, so apparently this website is still safe.
The whole firewall system is complicated, I dont think it will just block you because you wrote something like these in this article.
Frank Luo says:
February 1st, 2010 at 6:34 pmI doubt you will be blocked from going to China. However, there is a possibility that they might have you followed, tap your phone, and/or intercept and read your emails and other communications if you consistently wrote things that they don’t like.
Dalai Lama himself is not much of a sore topic, as sore topics go. The communists couldn’t care less what he DOES himself because he still does not really threaten them — he’s been screaming himself hoarse for fifty years with no effect whatsoever on the actual situation in Tibet. What they are concerned with is the leadership of various nations receiving him as a leader of his people, or receiving him as a guest period. It’s a symbolic acknowledgment of the legitimacy of his position, rather than the Chinese government, as the leadership of Tibet. So, rather than “love Dalai Lama”, write things like “Tibet independence”, “Tibet general referendum for declaring autonomy”, “Obama should invite Dalai Lama to the White House for a state dinner” etc., will probably have better effect.
Other thing that really gets the communists’ goat are the Falungong cult and Taiwan. You really want to piss the commies off? Try reporting on Falungong member claims about communist brutality, such as organ harvesting by military hospitals, calling for a referendum for Taiwan to declare sovereignty as an island nation like the Philippines, calling for the U.S. to fully commit to defending Taiwan against a communist Chinese invasion, things of that nature.
People who complain about the U.S. government have a lot to learn about what “brutal” really means. Everytime I see someone from either side of the political spectrum comparing American presidents or other politicians to people like Hitler, it bothers me because that really is trivializing what those people and governments did.
Dyske says:
February 1st, 2010 at 8:46 pmPerfect, your comment would probably do the job.