Tag Archive for 'China'

Google now blames China for search engine outage

Published on March 31, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Google is now blaming government censorship for a temporary outage of its search engine in mainland China.

Google initially attributed Tuesday’s outage to a technical glitch, a string of text “gs_rfai” that began appearing in Web addresses in the last 24 hours. Because of the characters “rfa,” Chinese filtering systems associated the searches with Radio Free Asia, which is inaccessible in China, the Internet search giant concluded. Google did not say how the string of text was created. Chinese Internet users speculated Tuesday that the addition of the characters triggered the error messages.

But, after an investigation, Google on Tuesday blamed the outage on China’s Internet filtering system.

“It’s clear we actually added this parameter a week ago. So whatever happened today to block Google.com.hk must have been as a result of a change in the Great Firewall,” a Google spokesman said. “Our search traffic in China is now back to normal even though we have not made any changes at our end. We will continue to monitor what is going on, but for the time being this issue seems to be resolved.”

– Jessica Guynn via

Google and China: What You Need to Know

Published on March 28, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The ongoing battle between Google and China sometimes reads like a spy novel, featuring a giant technology company clashing with a cadre of totalitarian overlords, attacks by hackers apparently aimed at pinpointing citizen activists and dissidents, and grandstanding speeches by senators and congressmen about the Chinese threat. Guardian political columnist and historian Timothy Garton Ash recently called it “a defining story of our time.” Here’s our take on the most recent news and what you really need to know about this epic confrontation. Continue reading ‘Google and China: What You Need to Know’

Twitter Will Be Available in China…Someday

Published on March 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Twitter to Chinavia
While most of the world happily enjoys the Internet’s free services such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google, in China these are either inaccessible or might become so in the following months.

And, as shown by Google’sGoogle recent squabble with the Chinese government, it can be very hard to operate in the world’s most populous country. But Twitter’s Jack Dorsey has faith that TwitterTwitter will be able to operate in China, although it’s currently blocked by the government.

At a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism, Chinese activist Ai Weiwei asked Dorsey whether he can promise availability of Twitter in China. Dorsey said: “I would say yes. It’s just a matter of time.” Weiwei called this answer “very philosophical”; knowing that a giant like Google has trouble securing its presence in China, a cautious answer like this by a much smaller Twitter instills little confidence.

Weiwei also pointed out a very interesting fact that westerners probably don’t think about: Twitter is a very different tool in Chinese and in English. “At 140 words, in Chinese, you can really write a novel. You can discuss most profound ideas really to democracy, freedom, poetry,” he said. Unfortunately, it seems that this fact didn’t escape Chinese censors, which have been blocking Twitter for nearly a year now.

via http://mashable.com/2010/03/16/twitter-china/

Does Internet Matter in China?

Published on February 8, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/lihuafang/archives/345317.aspx
Does Internet Matter in China?
李华芳 @ 2009-10-16 22:00
Does Internet Matter in China?
Li Huafang

Hu Yong, 2008,?The Rising Cacophony: Personal expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age, Guangxi Normal University Press. （胡泳，2008，《众声喧哗：网络时代的个人表达与公共讨论》，广西师范大学出版社。）
The paper,?The Internet and Civil Society in China: a preliminary assessment, is Guobin Yang’s pioneering study on the relationship between Internet and politics, which came up with a question that whether Internet has boosted the development of civil society.[1] In another word, what is the relationship between Internet and civil society? Continue reading ‘Does Internet Matter in China?’