Net Nanny Follies

Picking off the small troublemakers...

... One by one.

From Global Voices:

Three prominent bloggers GFWed in the same week

Following the blocking of veteran Internet essayist He Caitou's two longstanding blogs hecaitou.net and caobian.info on December 25, renowned columnist Lian Yue had yet another one of his blogs, lianyue.net, blocked on the 29th; late on the evening of December 30, Peking University new media associate professor Hu Yong discovered his independent blog, yong.hu, has also become inaccessible from mainland China.

As we found out when Danwei.org was blocked in July 2009, the Net censors in China are going after small websites and blogs hosted on servers outside of China. Any website about China with a certain amount of influence within China that publishes anything about certain sensitive subjects is fair game for the Great FireWall treatment.

Welcome to 2010.

Links and Sources
  • Twitter feeds of Hecaitou, Lian Yue, Hu Yong
  • There are currently 5 Comments for Picking off the small troublemakers....

    Comments on Picking off the small troublemakers...

    For some mysterious reasons, Nanny suddenly decides to unblock Wordpress. My blog, which has never been accessible in China before, is finally unblocked, even though I have been writing nothibng but taboo topics, as always. I checked other Wordpress blogs, including a Free Tibet one and a FLG one. They are all accessible from behind the Great Fire Wall. I reckon Nanny is too busy dealing with all these big fish that she decides to let the small ones go.

    lianyue.net, yonghu.hu, youtube, blogspot, danwei.org etc... are all directly accessible for me right now- Beijing, 22:27, Jan., 4 2010.

    well, that was short lived... everything blocked again.

    Can you tell us if there's still traffic from China to your website? The Alexa.com shows 19.9% of your visitors are coming from China, are they subscribers or just WuMao? I'm interested in the effectiveness of the GFW...

    Yes, there are a lot of people using VPNs and other tricks to get around the GFW and access Danwei.

    I have no idea about the accuracy of Alexa's numbers. Google Analytics shows a mere handful of visitors from China, but Google's stats are based on IP addresses, so people using VPNs to access our website will appear to be coming from wherever there VPN server is located.

    Post a comment

    All comments are moderated and subject to review by Danwei contributors and editors, but well-grounded and articulate comments will be published regardless of which way they lean. Because comments published on any website ultimately contribute to the character of that website, we may decline to publish comments that are irrelevant, redundant, or that do not adhere to generally accepted standards of courtesy; if you are looking for a fight, there are plenty of other venues available online.


    Some useful html: <b>bold</b>, <i>italic</i>,
    <a href="http://www.danwei.org">link</a>

    Media Partners
    Visit these sites for the latest China news
    090609guardian2.png 090609CNN3.png
    China Media Timeline
    Major media events over the last three decades
    Danwei Model Workers
    The latest recommended blogs and new media
    laomo2010x80.jpg
    From 2008
    Books on China
    AXL100719wabcj.jpg
    When a Billion Chinese Jump by Jon Watts: The Guardian's Jon Watts authored a book on the environment, focusing especially on China and how its realities and policies will affect the rest of the world.
    Jeroen de Kloet's China with a Cut: Jeroen de Kloet is the author of China with a Cut, which looks into the dakou culture and then the ensuing commercialism of China's music market.
    Jean Kwok's Girl In Translation: Jean Kwok writes about the Asian American emigration experience. Her website describes the plot of Girl In Translation thus: "When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings." For more, see Jeankwok.net.
    Front Page of the Day
    A different newspaper every weekday
    From the Vault
    Classic Danwei posts
    + National Geographic goes Chinese (2008.06): An American publication portraying China to the Chinese - in Chinese? Not surprisingly, the choice of topics reveals certain China tropes that have gained currency in the West.
    + The 'national' in National Day (2006.10): Xiao Feng writes about China's national flavor, national curse, national bird, national car, and so forth, Dongfang Yu writes on the true meaning of China's National Day in the age of angry youth.
    + New classical education fills a void (2005.06): Why the sudden interest in guoxue (国学)?
    Danwei Archives
    Danwei Feeds
    Via Feedsky rsschiclet2.png (on the mainland)
    or Feedburner rsschiclet.gif (blocked in China)
    rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links)
    rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Top Links: Links from the top bar
    rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Jobs: Want ads
    rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30