I find this hard to believe, but according to the South China Morning Post, China is going to unblock the Internet (at least to a very limited extent). For those of you in the free Internet world, this might be hard to believe, but here in China many websites are blocked including some of the world's most popular websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Many foreign blog and news sites are also blocked such as the New York Times. Since this blog is hosted by Blogger, it is also inaccessible to the vast majority of people in China. Those of us residing in China that want to keep our online connection to the rest of the world must rely on VPNs.
Whenever I've had conversations with Chinese people (mostly college students) about Internet censorship and why sites like Facebook are blocked, the inevitable response is "because they say bad things about China." Criticism of China is generally not allowed, especially on a worldwide public forum such as the Internet. However, I've always suspected that another reason for China's Internet censorship is to protect Chinese websites from having to compete with American and other foreign websites. The lack of access to YouTube has certainly helped Chinese video sites such as Youku become highly popular among Chinese netizens. Similarly, Weibo (China's dominant blogging site) has greatly benefited from the lack of foreign blog sites such as Blogger.
I'm just guessing, but this may have something to do with China's new "opening up" policy for the Internet in Shanghai's new free trade zone. Part of the free trade zone status involves allowing foreign telecommunications companies the opportunity to provide Internet access. Foreign telecoms might be less willing than Chinese Internet service providers to provide access in a market where they are required to restrict a large portion of the access provided, especially when the restriction includes the most popular foreign websites.
By allowing greater Internet access in a very limited (although heavily populated) part of China, the government can monitor Chinese neitzens' reactions to less a less censored flow of information. While the impact of allowing greater Internet access just in Shanghai will be very limited, it could be an interesting experiment which, if successful in the eyes of the Chinese government, might eventually be replicated at least in part by reforms throughout China.
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