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NYTimes.com in China: Sunday morning update
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1) For me, back in Beijing, the main NYT site is fully blocked, if I'm using the plain Chinese internet without a VPN or other burnishment.
2) Anyone who really wants to can find what's on that site -- with a VPN, by going through the International Herald Tribune site, by trying mobile.nytimes.com from a hand-held device, or with one of the tech workarounds mentioned here yesterday.
3) Without the relatively fast, informal-but-informative polling made possible by the internet, it would have been harder to establish that this was happening all over the vast country all at once. So thanks for writing in.
INTELLECTUAL RIGOR BONUS POINT 3A) As a matter of logic, one cannot be absolutely certain that this is a purposeful, country-wide blackout. Conceivably there is some other technological or accidental explanation. I consider this extremely unlikely, given: that the same computer that won't load the pages while using a normal connection loads them instantly when a VPN is turned on; that the pattern is reported in every corner of the country, from Urumqi to Dalian to Zhuhai and points in between; and that it involves a site about which the government has complained before and that has recently carried some sensitive items. But logically, we cannot exclude the possibility that it's all an accident.
4) While the porous nature of the current NYT block is consistent with past Great Firewall practice, the motivation for this episode remains unclear at the tactical level and puzzling at the strategic. I won't review the tactical possibilities, some of which were mentioned earlier. The real question concerns the strategy.
As i argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official PR machinery often succeeds mainly in making the country seem far more closed-off, impenetrable, defensive, and difficult to deal with than it actually is most places most of the time. By that logic, what exactly will China gain through this episode? The vast majority of Chinese net users would never look at NYTimes.com anyway -- it's in the wrong language. Those who really want to see what's on there can find a way to do so, despite the block. And how confident, open-minded, rules-abiding, modern and so on will the episode make the Chinese government look in other countries' eyes? Governments everywhere are annoyed by the press, but a mark of being in the big leagues is viewing press criticism as a necessary annoyance. This just is strange.
2) Anyone who really wants to can find what's on that site -- with a VPN, by going through the International Herald Tribune site, by trying mobile.nytimes.com from a hand-held device, or with one of the tech workarounds mentioned here yesterday.
3) Without the relatively fast, informal-but-informative polling made possible by the internet, it would have been harder to establish that this was happening all over the vast country all at once. So thanks for writing in.
INTELLECTUAL RIGOR BONUS POINT 3A) As a matter of logic, one cannot be absolutely certain that this is a purposeful, country-wide blackout. Conceivably there is some other technological or accidental explanation. I consider this extremely unlikely, given: that the same computer that won't load the pages while using a normal connection loads them instantly when a VPN is turned on; that the pattern is reported in every corner of the country, from Urumqi to Dalian to Zhuhai and points in between; and that it involves a site about which the government has complained before and that has recently carried some sensitive items. But logically, we cannot exclude the possibility that it's all an accident.
4) While the porous nature of the current NYT block is consistent with past Great Firewall practice, the motivation for this episode remains unclear at the tactical level and puzzling at the strategic. I won't review the tactical possibilities, some of which were mentioned earlier. The real question concerns the strategy.
As i argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official PR machinery often succeeds mainly in making the country seem far more closed-off, impenetrable, defensive, and difficult to deal with than it actually is most places most of the time. By that logic, what exactly will China gain through this episode? The vast majority of Chinese net users would never look at NYTimes.com anyway -- it's in the wrong language. Those who really want to see what's on there can find a way to do so, despite the block. And how confident, open-minded, rules-abiding, modern and so on will the episode make the Chinese government look in other countries' eyes? Governments everywhere are annoyed by the press, but a mark of being in the big leagues is viewing press criticism as a necessary annoyance. This just is strange.
