Since last night, I haven’t been able to access any articles in the NYT. Oddly, the home page opens fine, but click on any link and you end up with the dreaded “Server is not responding” message. Same thing happens if you click on any links to NYT articles from other sites. I thought China had made some big strides in opening up its Internet. If this is more than a passing glitch I’ll be quite disappointed.
Update: Go here to let James Fallows know if you can access the NYT or not. (Poll ends Dec 19 at 9pm, Beijing time.)
And now, suddenly blogspot is blocked again too. And it’s not the same as usual – normally, it takes a minute or two for the server to time out on the blocked site. This time, the instant I click the link the message pops up that “the server has unexpectedly lost the connection.” Totally weird. Of course, the blocking of blogspot has been random and temperamental, like blogspot makes the Nanny go completely bipolar. So this could just be one of those off-nights, where suddenly everything goes back to normal the next day. I hope so. Back to normal, she’s back on her meds.
1
By AndyR
I’m having the same trouble in Shenzhen…works on VPN, to me that smells of Net Nanny.
December 19, 2008 @ 9:20 am | Comment
2
By Richard
Something must have happened. They haven’t harmonized the entire NYT in years.
December 19, 2008 @ 9:26 am | Comment
3
By zhwj
As of right now, NYTimes is fine for me in Beijing. I was having some trouble with overseas sites earlier, specifically the lostlaowai.com interview with John Pasden of Sinosplice, but about an hour ago all the problems cleared up.
December 19, 2008 @ 11:14 am | Comment
4
By PB
Well, there’s a front page story about how the economic path set out by 30 years reform is facing unprecedented peril. Is the Net Nanny getting that sensitive?
December 19, 2008 @ 11:24 am | Comment
5
By Richard
zhwj, it’s now a few hours later, and am experiencing the exact same thing – no problems with home page, but no links will open. Explaining the random nature of these brownouts/blackouts is impossible I guess.
PB, I started having the problem several hours before that story appeared.
December 19, 2008 @ 12:50 pm | Comment
6
By lensovet
really?
December 19, 2008 @ 1:13 pm | Comment
7
By Richard
Well, it’s certainly much better than in 2002-3, when the Times, BBC News, WaPo, Google, all blogspot blogs and many, many others were totally hard-blocked. There was that amazing time before the Games when nearly everything was accessible (relatively – Free Tibet, China Digital Times and others were still blocked, but Amnest Int’l and the like were available). Recently, Typepad was unblocked, and blogspot has been back for a long time. So yes, there were big strides forward; no comparison whatsoever to five years ago. Does it still suck? Of course.
December 19, 2008 @ 1:26 pm | Comment
8
By kevinnolongerinpudong
Having been in Nanjing during the Olympics, I was a bit confused by all the talk about “relaxing Internet controls.” Might have been a Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou thing, but it sure didn’t happened in the home in which I lived in Nanjing, with the usual wireless home set-up. In fact, the controls seemed even more paranoid.
Of course, I’m not surprised in the least.
December 19, 2008 @ 4:34 pm | Comment
9
By Richard
There were definitely some big changes in Beijing for those few weeks, most of which were probably temporary. It got a lot of coverage at the time. Just more window dressing and BS, like temporarily making it seem like there’s no traffic in Beijing.
December 19, 2008 @ 4:57 pm | Comment
10
By zhwj
And now in the evening I’m seeing the same thing you described. Different location than this morning (and then I didn’t check the NYTimes all day). Related: James Fallows is conducting a survey and will announce the results soon.
December 19, 2008 @ 9:15 pm | Comment
11
By Richard
Thanks for the update, zhwj.
December 19, 2008 @ 9:18 pm | Comment
12
By ecodelta
Those who can relax restrictions can tighten them again.
It seems the “leadership” fears “interesting” times are coming.
A reflex reaction?
December 19, 2008 @ 11:33 pm | Comment
13
By Richard
We’ll see. Some are saying this seems to be a problem at the NYT’s end, not the CCP’s – I suspect they’re wrong but for now we don’t know. Meanwhile, I’m reading the NYT tonight using the Anchorfree proxy, which is pretty powerful.
December 20, 2008 @ 12:22 am | Comment
14
By Raj
If anyone missed it BBC Chinese was reblocked earlier this week. Is the English-language site still accessible?
I’m not sure how it could be NYT’s problem – front page and links open up fine for me (I’m outside of China atm).
December 20, 2008 @ 2:40 am | Comment
15
By Bao
Hotspot Shield = Can’t load Digital Time (Witopia is OK, conspiracy theory welcomed about free VPNs).
Witopia = Everything fine, but MSN disconnects every 2 minutes (since the Olympics)
NYT (no VPN) = Can’t even access the page (today).
Would you like me to share my exchange with Witopia before and during the Olympics ?
I will only if there is a user request, very educative…
December 20, 2008 @ 3:10 am | Comment
16
By Keir
Absolutely ridiculous. Now that the Olympics are over China has decided it no longer needs to be taken seriously by the civilised world. Imagine simply blocking arguably the world’s most famous and influential newspaper on earth. Shameful.
December 20, 2008 @ 9:23 am | Comment
17
By Richard
Now into day three – can still get to the homepage, but that’s it.
Raj, the BBC news sites are available, at least in English.
December 20, 2008 @ 10:26 am | Comment
18
By Raj
Now that the Olympics are over China has decided it no longer needs to be taken seriously by the civilised world.
You thought it was going to keep all of those websites open after the games were over? Or that you’re surprised they may have gone further to make access to other websites difficult?
Imagine simply blocking arguably the world’s most famous and influential newspaper on earth.
Is The Times blocked as well? Geez, that’s harsh!
December 20, 2008 @ 8:27 pm | Comment