Talk:Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of the WikiProject Wikipedia, an attempt to improve and organize Wikipedia's coverage of itself. If you would like to participate, visit the project page. Please remember to avoid self-references and maintain a neutral point of view on topics relating to Wikipedia.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.

This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale. (see comments)

[edit] Available again in the PRC (China Netcom)

The site is again available in English as of May 12th 2008. Falun Gong, Tiananmen 1989 and a couple of other ones on the english wiki are blocked. Also Chinese wiki is almost completely blocked with the exception of the main page. More or less. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.231.61.34 (talk) 05:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding Wikipedia

I changed one sentence by inserting "most of" because not the entire site is available. For example, this very article is impossible to reach except through VPN, at least in many parts of the country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.121.99.210 (talk) 06:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Currently Blocked in China

I was in China a few weeks ago, and Wikipedia was blocked in Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Beijing. 76.102.62.11 04:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I just got the news from my girlfriend in China that Wikipedia is unblocked as of April 1st 2008 in Shenzhen. Do you know if that is all over the country? Cyr S. (talk) 02:59, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm also in Shenzhen (using TopWay as an ISP), and both Wikipedia and BBC news are accessible from here.

TriMesh (talk) 18:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Marc Bisgaard Wikipeida is currently unblocked in Shanghai at IP 58.247.247.16. This was not the case two days ago —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.247.247.16 (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Block due to Topics related to Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, Tibet and others

In my opinion the block of Wikipedia in China is very simple to explain: In China it is illegal to publish anything related to Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square, the Taiwan and Tibet Issue (and lots of other stuff). Only the state owned media is allowed to publish anything related to that, and what they will normally publish (if at all) is propaganda information that is far away from the truth. By the way, everyone working in a Chinese media company needs to be member of "The Party" (Communist Party). There are strict policies at ISPs (which are also state owned) to enforce these rules. For example, Falun Gong is outlawed in China, and official instructions to media, ISPs and law enforcement is to "protect" the Chinese people from such content by simply blocking it.

To illustrate how this works in a real life scenario with something else than the Internet, I would like to make an example using Hong Kong TV channels. The city of Shenzhen is a special economic zone with its own border within China. The city is located right north of Hong Kong, behind the border to the PRC. There are two reasons why you can still receive Hong Kong TV channels: the city is very close, so you could use an antenna to receive the signals, and the cities (state owned) official cable TV providers (ie. Topway Shenzhen) are also carrying Hong Kong channels. However, when there is a report on one of these HK channels about a topic that China avoids, such as the anniversary of the massacre of Tiananmen Square, the cable TV provider in Shenzhen has simple instructions to cut the signal during the time the report is on air.

They way they do it is simple. They just pre-recorded many old HK government advertisings to play them again and again when they cut something out of the news. Sometimes they even replace the complete program with an old one (not sure if this is due to laziness to cut single fragments of a program). Sometimes they just play the old news from HK instead of today's news. "They" apparently believe that they cut so well and that the people of China are so stupid, that they wouldn't realize anyway.

You have to understand that the official Chinese version of what happened at Tiananmen Square is completely different from what really happened. Just remember the attention that Google received internationally after word was out that Google works with the Chinese government to censor search results in China. There are Wikipedia articles about this. You also need to be aware that these special economic zones such as Shenzhen or Shanghai are not the same as the rest of China. While people in these zones seem rich and have access to technology and media, there are other parts in china that are basically cut off (borders) where they don't have such luxury. People from outside of these zones can't just travel to one of these places. They don't have the necessary ID cards/passports and they could not get it. On the other hand, many of these people from the so-called country side will get a permit if they are working in one of these factories inside the cities.

So to cut this long story right here: the reason why Wikipedia is blocked is because there is lots of content on it that is outlawed in China. It is not only these topics mentioned in the title, but probably plenty of other topics that would go against the government, the party, the leader(s), and historical happenings in the past. If Wikipedia wouldn't have all that, it would probably not be blocked in my opinion. I am not aware of any blocks just because the government wouldn't want Chinese to have access for other reasons that that (comment if you know any).

Feel free to use info from this comment on the main page, but if you do so I suggest adding a few links to other related Wikipedia articles (like to Shenzhen, Tiananment Square massacre, etc). I am normally not involved in such articles but thought to report my own observations from the ground. I travel a lot.

[edit] Title

I know that people are not suppose to talk about the topic on the discussion page but I don't know where else to or how else to post/tell about/you people this. I am Chinese, and I think the blocking of the site might also be partly due to its title. Through the translation says its an encyclopedia, the word free might be wrongly translated into 自由 which means freedom/liberal/liberty; not free/free of change. Though I am not sure whether this is done on purpose or not? But translating it to 免费 which means free of charge might help to lift the ban? Norman Bethune 02-Dec-05

I think the problem is with the content and policies of Wikipedia, not its subtitle... In any case, we have extensive discussion about the topic at zh:Talk:中国大陆封锁维基媒体事件, you might want to take a look if you're interested. -- ran (talk) 02:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

its the content not title nobody except the older population even knows even something about this stuff when pbs went to china and showed the tank man nobody in Beijing University(where it all started) even recognized him. They didnt even understand what it was. no its the content suppression of freedom Nobody of Ithaca 02:41, 31 July 2007 (UTC) by the way im mainland chinese in america

In any case, it is the "freedom/liberty" meaning which is intended in English and other languages, not "free-of-charge". --Saforrest 13:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The Vietnamese Wikipedia discussed the same issue earlier this year, and a community-wide vote led to the changing of our motto from Bách khoa [toàn thư] tự do (free/libre encyclopedia) to Bách khoa toàn thư mở (open encyclopedia) to skirt the issue entirely. The point was made that Vietnam's own motto, Độc lập, tự do, hạnh phúc, contains the word "freedom", but we decided to change the motto anyways, since visitors often thought that we weren't fluent in either English or Vietnamese and had mistranslated "free/gratis". – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:20, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

If that can improve the situation, I think 免费 is to prefer. Yug (talk) 19:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Well I've always taken it to mean "free of charge". The more idealistic meaning may appeal to the activist segment of Wikipedians, but that's a pretty small number of people. My guess is that most readers will interpret it in the same non-rheritorical way as I do. 62.31.55.223

[edit] French view ...

This article is amazing. I started the french one. I think this is amazing because the Chinese wikipedia is the only one which can become stronger than the English one, and it's chinese gouvernement itself whom destroy this good chance. Other gouvernements should be happy of that : chinese people will be 10 years slower in knowledge, compare to other countries. Yug (talk) 19:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC

I don't think it could. Chinese speakers are not drawn from all over the world like English speakers. There is a lack of variety of perspectives among them, and most of them are trained to strictly follow the Chinese Communist Party line, which makes the concept of a "neutral point of view" alien to them. 62.31.55.223 19:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I have seen so many people like you who are claiming others are biased while their own claims are purely ungrounded. Let me ask you: How many Chinese have you ever met? And how many wikipedia pages created/modified by Chinese have you ever read and classified as biased? So far, your claim is purely an insult to the intelligence of Chinese people and a discrimination based on country and origin indeed.--Leo 23:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Note that, ironically, this very way of answering (something along the line "you don't know chinese" instead of simply counter-arguing any point claimed as wrong), is a very common, almost preditive one among chinese net poster. You should avoid as possible answering this way, as it can be quite irritating and therefore may contribute to maintain this wrong idea regarding the intelligence of Chinese peopleBenji2 (talk) 20:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gollum browser - 'workaround'

I recently found the following website, which is intended to browse Wikipedia. The Gollum 'browser' (a web application, not a true browser) should/will work around the 'great firewall of China'. Is this worth noting in the article? http://gollum.easycp.de/en/

82.168.187.228 18:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd not mention any specific workarounds. This may just lead in having Gollum blocked as well. Chinese Internet users usually know how to circumvent the blocks - it is widely known by Chinese that the government blocks sites. 01:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree although its quite true in some parts...some chinese,I have seen and believe me, would say better things about their system more than the Chinese people themselves, not because their bias but because well they do have this odd respect for history which is OKAY but as we all know, they have the wrong history.....Not the true history —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.155.120.176 (talk) 11:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Mirrors Blocked too?

When I was in China last fall (oct-dec), I did notice I was unable to get to the wikimedia sites. Initially, I thought it to be not a huge deal because I had a list of mirrors from http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Copies_of_Wikipedia_content which I could use to get at the information (though of course not make any edits). However, after a few weeks, probably around mid-November, I noticed that access to this list of mirrors was giving me the same errors as when I tried to access Wikimedia sites! Wasn't sure it was worth mentioning in the article, so I'll include it here. I'm no longer in China but will be going back in a few weeks and can confirm this then. --Vanchuck 22:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Offical Reason

Did the Chinese government issue an offical reason for the ban? Or are the reasons for the ban all speculation? If it is all speculation then why don't we ask the Chinese government regarding the reason for the ban? Pseudoanonymous 02:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

All speculation. As far as asking is concerned, I don't think they've figured out which agency is responsible for this yet, so who would they ask? -- ran (talk) 13:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move to project space

This article is very well written and fascinating. That said, it incorporates and makes use of a lot of information which could not reasonably be cited to source other than referring to internal wikipedia pages or asking users. I think that the appropriate solution—rather than attempt to remove information—is to move this article into the project space (perhaps Wikipedia: Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China). I know a lot of people worked hard on this article, and I don't want to denigrate their efforts in the slightest. Can anyone who has been active on this article respond to this? savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 13:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. See Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references. JianLi 21:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I've moved it JianLi 21:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Hold your horses everyone! There's no need to rush into anything. I've already expressed my thoughts on the mailing list so I won't repeat them here. Suffice it to say that there's no need to move this out of mainspace, although any content which is really not encyclopaedic can easily be split out of the article and into the project space. --bainer (talk) 13:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Taiwan behind the Great Firewall?

The article doesnt amke it clear if Taiwan is behind the Great Firewalll or not. Can't add on this,since I'm not in China. ~ c. tales *talk* 04:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I highly doubt it is.. I think it would definitely have come up before if it were. The article says it applies to mainland china, and also that it's in the PRC, so I don't think it's that unclear.. TastyCakes 07:30, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on chinese related topics, didn't know because it explicitly mentions that HK is not behind the firewall but made no mention of taiwan. ~ c. tales ^*talk* 06:00, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Realize that, unlike with Hong Kong and Macau, the government of the PRC has essentially no control over Taiwan today, even though they believe they should. Therefore, there's no real chance that their firewall affects Taiwan in any way. Heimstern Läufer 18:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

PRC only has territorial claim on Taiwan (ROC), but it has no power to govern Taiwan, it's a de facto independent country. Why Hong Kong and Macau unfilted? I don't know why the brutal authority shows their lenience on the two regions. plarq

Most probably because they are not "brutal". This may be difficult to understand, but the CCP actually believes that free flow of information could have unintended negative consequences on a developing country. I do not agree with this position, but too often people outside of China assume that what the Chinese government does it does only out of its own self-interest. Not so: they are not petty dictators who seek only enrichment of their persons (of the sort that currently plague so many countries in Africa, for example). They truly want China to be a powerful country with a wealthy populace, the kind of country that others will look up to and respect. As such, however misguided some of their policies may be, their hearts are, for the most part, in the right place. I have complete confidence that they will come around eventually. It just may take a while. 70.132.14.22 03:17, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

To confirm, Taiwan is not blocked by the Great Firewall, and sites blocked by Mainland China (including Wikipedia) do not apply in Taiwan. I'm Taiwanese, in Taiwan, and I access Wikipedia just fine. Bhamv 07:09, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reference in the recent unblocked status

Where is the "with users from around the country on Chinese-forums.com reporting" reference coming from? I see it mentioned in the article http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/online/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003251388 but no credit is given. If the information is abtained directly from said forum, I expect a link. — Ming Hua 10:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lifting of ban is incomplete

I am a user in mainland China,I have compelling evidence to suggest that the block is due to topics related to Falun Gong and Tian'anmen Square Incident.The blocking has been lifted because the central government is now technically able to partially block wikipedia entries without interfering with pure-scholastic ones.Attempts to access entries of Falun Gong and Tian'anmen Square Incident will result in immediate "drop out",a phenomenon quite similar to the technic used in google censorship.Also,the user will be denied access to wikipedia for a brief moment. Suffice it to say,the government has realized wikipedia's importance as a knowledge base,and now has the ability to filter certain contents,that is why they have come to the conclusion of partial-unblocking. If you are outside mainland China,try those entries through a Chinese proxy server,that should prove my point.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Photonboi1988 (talk • contribs) on 12 October 2006

I've just rewrote the section using some of the weakest sources I've ever imagined. At least it's better than the previous external source, which was entirely based on a previous version of this page. Hopefully, some credible sources will be published soon to replace the basically hearsay that I have cited. - Banyan Tree 19:44, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I also live in Mainland China, and I am currently on Wikipedia (if you haven't noticed). I agree that this section should be improved. I know that this is a current event, but the fact that one can use Wikipedia in china, since four days ago, is huge news. I will no longer need to use factbug.org; sweet. ABart26 04:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I too am a user in Mainland China; personally, it's obvious that the hand of the "great People's Republic of China" is behind this, subjecting its citizens to what we prefer to call call 愚民教育 (translates literally to "stupid people education", which means to feed false information and propaganda to its people to make them "stupid" and "ignorant" of the woes around them). The hypocrisy is vile, and I think this article should be improved upon and given more attention so that we can all give a good laugh at this country; perhaps then they will realize the foolishness of their ways. -"7th Pen" 15:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I was in China last week (Shanghi and Beijing) and couldn't get on en.wikipedia.org even though the news reported that Wikipedia was no longer blocked.Mrcsparker 04:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Encouragement to RPC gouverment to lift fully the ban

Unblock wikipedia in english is a good thing for chinese people, allow chinese people to build their own one will be greater ! All my encouragement to RPC web checkers to allow full acces to Wikipedia en and zh (chinese). Chinese are the only ones able to build a wiki bigger than this english one. Good luck China ! Yug (french student, studying chinese and history)

I beg to differ. Since most mainland Chinese lack the diversity of perspective and liberal education, the completely uplift of the ban could serve more for Chinese government and harmful to NPOV policy of Wikipedia. Image numerous Chinese wiki'ers flooded into every Taiwan-related articles and vow to annex Taiwan by any means. Since a larger proportion of English-speaking mainland Chinese people receive better education and suffer less penalty of Chinese propaganda and lack of international perspective, I suggest adminstrators of Chinese Wikipedia translate more China-related articles of English Wikipedia to 中文 wikipedia. plarq

The fact that you can say this with a straight face amazes me. The pro-Taiwan view is a point of view, it is not NPOV. The pro-reunification-even-if-by-force view is likewise a point of view. Neither by itself is compatible with NPOV, and if the people on the mainland are not allowed to contribute, the result will not be an NPOV Chinese Wikipedia. Shame on you for supporting the ban just because it makes it easier for you to shape zh into a mouthpiece for your political POV. As someone who spent many years on the mainland, I can assure you that propaganda is not nearly as effective a tool as you seem to think it is, anyway. Many perspectives exist, even in "Red China". 70.132.14.22 03:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese wikipedia unblocked?

I just went on a Chinese forum, and a user posted that she could access Chinese Wiki.. Someone look into that? (I'm based in Canada) 67.70.116.221 22:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is now also unblocked (as well as the English version), as I'm writing from there and checked the main page in Chinese (I don't know about all pages)...

[edit] China shouldn't block Wikipedia

I think China shouldn't block Wikipedia because this is a free speech world. Thank you. Chris 03:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

you didn't know that even the Chinese Wikipedia is blocking lots of innocent users. --SummerThunder 08:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC) So how do you explain why you are blocked in the English Wikipedia?--Skyfiler 23:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

obviously, it's a free speech world, but in certain parts of the world (i.e. China) free speech is illegal and punishable. just watch chinese squarepants- the pure truth and nothing but 82nigiri 18:15, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

this is a free speech world but china is still not free the gov. dont want another uprising Nobody of Ithaca 02:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SummerThunder's edits

SummerThunder:

You're making identical additions to the Chinese Wikipedia article and here. Are you going to address my concerns over the POV slant of your edits that I've already brought up over there, as well as your deletion of my edits?

More importantly, why are your edits in the scope of this article? Shouldn't they be in the scope of the Chinese Wikipedia article? -- ran (talk) 06:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

and you are making same false accusations justl like what you did on the chinese site. Are you going to address my concerns over the POV slant of your edits that I've already brought up over on the Chinese wikipedia's web site, as well as your deletion of my edits, comments and votes as well as many other users comments which are supporting me on the chinese wikipedia site???--SummerThunder 08:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

What false accusations? I believe the following are true:

You are making the same additions here and on the Chinese Wikipedia article
I have concerns about your addition and have asked you about it on Talk:Chinese Wikipedia

Which of my edits on the Chinese Wikipedia are you concerned about? This is the first time you've ever mentioned this to me. As for the deletion of your edits, this is because you were spamming all of the Village Pump pages, and refusing to discuss civilly, much like what you are doing right now.

Also, this is the talk page for this article, can you please address the concerns related to this article first, and carry on other discussions where they belong? -- ran (talk) 18:30, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

In addition, why is the Self-censorship section even here? It should be under the scope of the Chinese Wikipedia article, not here. -- ran (talk) 00:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't see the connection, even SummerThunder insists. Is there a source for the connection? Otherwise I am going to remove the section altogeter again. -- Skyfiler

Go ahead. In the meantime, I've NPOVed what is essentially the same content over at Chinese Wikipedia. -- ran (talk) 00:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rename

"Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China" is a great descriptive title, but it doesn't sound like the title of an encyclopedia article (at least that's how I felt after I rewrote the lead). There has to be a better name for this article.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen the mailing list posts referenced above, but major parts of this entry rely on self-referencing of WP, and as a whole, the encyclopaedic content is already extant at Internet censorship in mainland China. Is there any reason that we shouldn't maintain this extremely helpful page in Wikipedia-space? Tewfik^Talk 23:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unblocked

I was able to access english wikipedia in China while visiting my friend on June 15, 2007. Can someone check if the block is lifted again? OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 12:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes.English Wikipedia is available at the moment.But the Chinese language version remains blocked.--Gzdavidwong 06:34, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Moreover, according to PCadviser [1], some "sensitive pages" are filtered out from the english wikipedia also. --Donar Reiskoffer 10:04, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

On jref forum, this Chinese user (4321go) on entry #46 says that he can use English wikipedia but not Chinese wikipedia. Sorry, he is slightly racist/nationalist, but he provides pictures. 82nigiri 18:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

So, Chinese people able to talk English have a new free access to knowledge.

Chinese people who just speak chinese have not free acces to large knowledge.

Isn't it ?

--Yug (talk) 05:12, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki.cn

Can anybody find out what www.wiki.cn is all about? So far it seems to be that this is a copied version of Wikipedia located in China. Because when I access it here in Britain and search for Tiananmen Massacre for Falung Gong, it goes blank just as if I were in China (I've been there and it looks just like that). 亮HH 02:05, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A few things here...

Hi. First of all, one of these articles (Chinese Wikipedia) says that it is unknown when the next unblock will be. However, I read from a link that I saw from Wikipedia that it was blocked for 11½ years. I can't remember the exact link, though. Secondly, the article suggests that users from within China are not able to access any language version. However, I'm not sure if this is true, but apparently people from China are able to edit the English Wikipedia. Thirdly, this is not Wikinews. When info changes and new updates are added, the old info is rewritten in the past tense and only the most recent and current piece of info is in the current tense. I know to be bold, but my brain has had too much Wikiradiation exposure to edit very much presently. Please clarify this in the articles. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 22:01, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Circumvention of the block

Should Wikipedia help Chinese with telling them how to break the law? Maybe the paragraph must be removed or changed.

And EDP policy follows 'the law of countries where the project content is predominantly accessed (if any)'. Does that count for only EDP? Why? Maybe Chinese Wikipedia should close (if the majority lives in China). Or maybe the EDP policy and all other policies should be based only on the law of where the servers are located. Helpsloose 20:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Uggh...

Has WP descended to the moral level of moping about being censored by an opressive dictatorship in its own territory? Has WP's maturity sunk that much? C'mon, really. 75.157.191.45 (talk) 18:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)