by Lee Stranahan
Access to the popular social networking service Twitter and email service Hotmail was blocked across mainland China late on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the twentieth anniversary of a bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square.
(snip)
Users in Beijing reported accessing the service without difficulty earlier on Tuesday, and even successfully searching potentially sensitive words such as “Tiananmen.”
While professional and urban Chinese often use foreign Internet tools, including Twitter, Hotmail and Facebook, the vast majority of Chinese use similar domestic services that are carefully monitored for any sign of content deemed subversive.
Since the Chinese government oftern seems to only understand money, I’ll approach this from that angle. China’s stab at half-capitalism is always going to run into trouble because of their lack of commitment to basic human rights. They can do okay at the ‘cheap labor’ part but when it comes to building a modern, high tech economy things like mass censorship are bad for business and innovation.
