As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the blog here at Muninn.net appears to be blocked in China. I have tried it from several internet cafes (网吧) here in Jinan and in addition to failing to load, on one occasion I was greeted with a scary alert box that told me I had tried to access a dangerous website. Clicking on the “OK” button shut down all my open browser windows in punishment.
Strangely, the New York Times is not blocked. CNN is, however, blocked. I’m not sure what mysterious logic is at work here, if any. Clearly CNN has made critical reports about China and it would seem to be in the interests of a totalitarian regime to make at least some minor effort to prevent its people from being exposed to it, unless they check into an expensive hotel and watch CNN on the hotel TVs that show it. However, why not also prevent them from seeing the series of highly critical NYT articles on China’s environment in the lead-up to the Olympics this summer? I was able to access all of these articles here in Jinan without the use of web proxies.