China Cracks Down On Blogs

Posted on January 11, 2003

Looks like the Chinese government has recently blocked access for its citizens to several major blog services hosted outside that country, including BlogSpot. Naturally, bloggers are up in arms. In a way, this isn’t too surprising; China has spent the last few years building a network of firewalls for precisely the purpose of controlling the content their citizens can read. It’s so extensive that it’s been referred to (only half in jest) as the Great Firewall of China. Russell Beattie points out that much of the technology for the Great Firewall came from Cisco, and he thinks (and I’m inclined to agree) that Cisco should be ashamed of itself for selling that tech to the PRC. Even if they didn’t configure it to act as a censorship machine, it should have been obvious that that’s what the Chinese wanted it for.

Censorship of any kind is a crime against humanity. The Chinese government has a lot to answer for today.