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China blocking Google.com?
Users and businesses complain of access crackdown...

By Reuters

Published: Thursday 08 June 2006

Internet users in China have complained of problems accessing google.com, in the latest bout of access problems afflicting foreign websites.

Google drew fire earlier this year after it announced it would voluntarily block politically sensitive terms on its Chinese site, google.cn - bowing to Beijing's demands in exchange for access to the world's number two internet market.

But the search giant's main site, google.com, had until recently been largely freely available and completely uncensored to web surfers in China. Speaking on Tuesday, company co-founder and president Sergey Brin, said only one per cent of Chinese users use google.cn, while the majority uses the unfiltered google.com.

Web users across China have now reported problems accessing google.com, with complaints ranging from intermittent access failure to sustained blockage.

Ma Le, 23, a researcher for a Beijing-based media company, said: "I haven't been able to access Google's web page for over a week. It's very inconvenient, as I regularly use it for work."

Students in Wuhan, the capital of the central Chinese province of Hubei, also reported trouble accessing Google.

An IT student, who declined to be named, said: "My friends and I feel very angry about it. Google stopped functioning for about a month, and it seems to be a common problem... The government always tries to control the internet, so that might be the main reason for it."

Google said on Tuesday that it had received notice of the access difficulties and was investigating the cause.

Cui Jin, a Google official, said: "We are currently looking into these reports but as yet don't know why these access problems are occurring."

Google is just one of the websites recently affected by access problems in China. Internet users have reported problems accessing email accounts and online chat servers linked to servers overseas, including Google's Gmail and MSN Hotmail accounts.

Peter Humphrey, who runs a security company in China, said: "In the last two and a half weeks, the level of international email traffic between China and overseas has declined sharply.

"It's not just the little guys who can't afford expensive technology and communication lines, it's also affecting big businesses as well... People are starting to wonder how they can do business in China so long as this goes on."

Free information activists Reporters Without Borders issued a statement on Tuesday condemning "the unprecedented level of internet filtering in China" and linked access problems to the passing of the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on 4 June.

Others have speculated that the government has tightened internet access ahead of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security forum for Central Asia, which starts on 15 June.

An official from the Ministry of Information Industry - China's internet regulator - admitted she had also had trouble accessing Google but declined to comment further.