2015-03-20
A man surfs the Internet at a coffee shop in Beijing in a file photo.
AFP
Reuters’ news website was apparently blocked in China on Friday, a day after a massive cyberattack hit an overseas-based anti-censorship site targeting the country’s “Great Firewall” of blocks, filters and human monitoring.
The company’s news content was inaccessible starting late on Thursday in both English and Chinese, although dedicated financial news and data feeds to Chinese clients continued, it said in a news item about the stoppage.
The news websites of Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are all already blocked by the Great Firewall, which limits what the average Chinese Internet user can see online.
“Reuters is committed to practicing fair and accurate journalism worldwide,” the news service quoted its own spokeswoman as saying. “We recognize the great importance of news about China to all our customers, and we hope that our sites will be restored in China soon.”
An Internet user who frequently circumvents Chinese web censorship to browse overseas websites, and who asked to be identified by a nickname, Xiao Biao, said he was unable to load the Reuters new site or those of the other media organizations on Friday.
He said the ruling Chinese Communist Party fears the consequences if its entire population has access to a variety of different opinions.
“The pages won’t load…and they keep refreshing constantly, so that it’s impossible to see any content at all,” he said while trying to view Reuters’ Chinese-language news site.
“Now it is saying that there is no response from the server, and that it is unable to load the page.”
He added: “I was able to load The Wall Street Journal’s Chinese-language website, however.”
Threatened by media reports
According to Xiao Biao, the government feels threatened by any media reports not strictly controlled by the state.
“In order to rule, they shut off a diversity of voices so as to keep the population in ignorance of news and views from outside China,” he said.
A Shanghai-based netizen surnamed Shi said she frequently tries to access overseas news sites, but is forced to give up.
“Every time I try to read the CNN website, it takes a very long time to open the page, which makes me lose patience,” she said.
“CNN’s video keeps buffering the whole time so you really can’t watch them,” Shi said. “That’s why I don’t visit it anymore.”
Guangdong-based netizen Jia Pin said China-based web users who want to read overseas news sites need to set up circumvention tools on their computer.
