China Blacks Out Tibet News — Kills YouTube Feeds — MSNBC, Baidu, Yahoo Knuckle Under

Published on March 17th, 2008

China Blacks Out Tibet News — FYI. I wonder how using a Tor network would work in China to bypass the ban. How are they choking this off?

Google’s YouTube, which the government often targets, was down over the weekend in China after someone posted video clips of Tibetan monks protesting. In-house censors at blog-hosting companies have excised any comments that are not in line with those from official state-owned media such as China Central Television CCTV or the Xinhua News Agency. One Internet user who goes by the handle “Rensheng jiushi fanfu” wrote in a comment under a posting about tourism in Tibet on the popular online bulletin board Tianya, “CCTV has reported it. Xinhua News Agency has also reported it. But Tianya cannot.”

Chinas most popular search engines and portals are sticking to the official line, too. The only mention of Tibet on Baidu.com BIDU, Chinas top search engine, is in a Xinhua story alleging the Dalai Lama is plotting to destroy social stability in Tibet, an effort that Xinhua says is doomed to fail. The Chinese versions of Yahoo YHOO and Microsofts MSFT MSN are running the same Xinhua item. The Chinese edition of Google News has links to the Chinese Web sites of the British Broadcasting Corp., Voice of America, and Taiwanese newspapers, but those sites are blocked within China.

20 users responded in " China Blacks Out Tibet News — Kills YouTube Feeds — MSNBC, Baidu, Yahoo Knuckle Under "

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# 1 Andy said, on March 17th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

I don’t pretend to know much of anything about Internet security, but I would imagine that Tor works the same in China as it does in the rest of the world. It should give them access to the same information as the rest of us, albeit at a much slower pace.

There’s always http://www.goolag.org/ too.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out for the Chinese. The harder the government tries to censor the people the harder people will try to get around it.

“The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

# 2 edwinrogers said, on March 17th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

I think Tor with an anonymising DNS server would be hard to stop. But downloading and having a Tor might itself be enough to incriminate the user.

# 3 Daniel said, on March 17th, 2008 at 5:00 pm

Seems to me that the more things are censored and blocked out the more the younger crowd who regularly use the internet in China will see this for what it is… they may not get all the details, but they’ll know the government is keeping them from seeing “whatever it is”. Sooner or later… my guess is sooner… this will blow up and cause another revolution. Olympics maybe?

# 4 DavidtheDuke said, on March 17th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

The sad part is it is generally accepted that China will host the Olympics. They never should have had the chance! It’s completely offending to human rights.

# 5 Jägermeister said, on March 17th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

TIHZ_HO and Ah_yea … any comments from inside the great firewall?

# 6 dzus said, on March 17th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

I think the what the rest of the world can do in support of the Tibetans is to boycott the Beijing Olympics. World governments certainly wouldn’t be too keen to be harsh on China, say as compare to Burma. No country, not even the French government, who are always vocal when it comes to human right violation, are keen to disrupt ties with the Chinese.

I say, let’s make the Beijing Olympics the least watch Olympics in modern time….

# 7 dzus said, on March 17th, 2008 at 6:56 pm

I say, let’s make the Beijing Olympics the least watch Olympics in modern time…. (of cuz there is 1 billion Chinese…)

# 8 Greg Allen said, on March 17th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Yahoo and Google are to China what IBM and the Bush Family were to the Nazis.

# 9 Ah_Yea said, on March 17th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

I’m Here!!!

Got back just a couple of days ago, and let me throw in my two bits…

China must be by far the most censored country in the world. Even the possession of a satellite dish can get you into trouble if you’re not careful.

While I was there, This site itself was regularly blocked! I was there for a week and could only get through for 2 days while other allowed sites went through just fine. Why not blocked permanently? I don’t know, it must be because of all you free-thinking bourgeoisie capitalist dogs or something…

Wikipedia is blocked everywhere in china uniformly. Oddly enough, Citizendium wasn’t blocked.

Censorship is not even on the list of concerns for the average Chinese citizen. They are more concerned about becoming less poor and having the basic necessities than censorship. The average Joe really believes in the Communist government and that they trying to do the right thing always, and by and large for the average Joe the government seems to be doing ok. They don’t see how much better their lives would have been under any other system, just how much better it is today than yesterday. They have blind faith in the powers that be and not so much in themselves. That’s what thousands of years of oppression gets you.

So, waiting for the people to revolt because of censorship is going to be a long wait.

Revolt is on the way, but only because the people in the countryside haven’t benefited from the economic reforms like the people in the cities. But even then, the people will first wait and see.

# 10 Ah_Yea said, on March 17th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

I meant to say that DV Uncensored is regularly blocked BECAUSE of you free-thinking bourgeoisie capitalist dogs!

(Insert Chinese National Anthem Here)

# 11 Mark T. said, on March 17th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

Sounds like a possible repeat of the 1936 Olympics. Growing Chinese power will be on display for the world to see… and fear?

Free-thinking Bourgeoisie Capitalist Dog

# 12 Ah_Yea said, on March 17th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

I’m expecting the Chinese athletes to blow out most of the other competitors because they are the only one’s accustomed to the smog! (not to mention many of their competitors won’t show up in the first place).

# 13 pedro said, on March 18th, 2008 at 2:32 am

#9 that reality is true in China, but not on most of the special economic regions and most certainly not in Hong Kong, where they still pride themselves to be very different from mainlanders.

# 14 Hmeyers said, on March 18th, 2008 at 3:11 am

Right now, Bush and Cheney are checking to see if Tibet has any oil before making official statements on the matter.

# 15 green said, on March 18th, 2008 at 4:26 am

Sounds like histroy repeating itself while sheep sit and say “look history is repeating itself”.

Things haven;t changed much since the time of the great pyramids. People are sheep and should be treated as such. Mmmm coffeee.

# 16 Mister Catshit said, on March 18th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

#5, Jag,

My thoughts exactly.

#9, Ah Yea,

glad you survived the flight. Welcome back.

I was uncomfortable with China being awarded the Olympics. Unfortunately the Olympics are a private organization who makes their own rules. Somehow I hoped China would loosen their tyrannical ways and open up.

# 17 Peter said, on March 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

TOR doesn’t work very well here – you can sometimes get a connection, but it’s extremely slow.

The best way to handle it (and what I’m doing right now) is to use an SHH or VPN connection to a machine outside China and use that as a proxy.

I’ve been told that tunneling over https works too, but I haven’t tried it.

# 18 Tim Dunn said, on March 23rd, 2008 at 3:19 pm

Webmasters, bloggers, blog posters and BBS posters, please use the following code on your website, blogs, and posts, substituting ‘v’ brackets for “L” brackets. [a href="http://www.freetibet.org/"] “I support the Tibetan people in their struggle for religious freedom and human rights [/A]

The Chinese-government sanctioned hackers can’t block us all!

I support the Tibetan people in their struggle for religious freedom and human rights

Viral marketing for Tibetan rights can help!

# 19 prince said, on July 29th, 2008 at 2:48 am

what is the world comeing to do in crazy china this people dosent know what human right is all about who is chinese why most the short people say that their dont need blacks in their clubs when the olympics beging what did we do to chinses people everyday their are peacking our guys here was it yeaterday their pic aout 50guys some of the guys have usd with then which the china police take all the money with then one of my friends have about 5,000usd he lost it the police take the money still put him in they car and move on everyday the same story thry have kill many black here cos they free nobody will take or ask then why, i just wonder where in usa where is UK people these that knows what humanright is all about pls we are gading in Gods neme we need yr help they have kill so many guys here and shall they parts is ture pls we need yr help

# 20 prince said, on July 29th, 2008 at 2:53 am

we need yr help the chinese police is killing blacks here pls come to our help thanks

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