YouTube hit by online block in China

by Stevie Smith - Mar 25 2009, 16:00

The quite literal ‘on and off’ relationship shared by The People’s Republic of China and YouTube has shifted back to ‘off’ this week after the communist government reportedly placed an Internet block on the hugely popular video-sharing service.

More specifically, Google-owned clip site YouTube is presently unavailable to Net users in China and, according to a Google spokesman, has been offline for more than 24 hours.

“We don’t know the reason for the blockage,” commented Google’s Scott Rubin, “but are working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users in China.”

Given the track record gathered by China when it comes to actively filtering and blocking Internet content deemed to be critical of the ruling Communist Party, knee-jerk reaction would suggest certain unspecified content posted to YouTube has sent up red flags in the government.

The cause of the outage could well be rooted in a BBC report from earlier in the week, which outlined that China had cut access to YouTube after it was revealed the site was carrying clips of Tibetan monks being beaten by Chinese soldiers.

However, while the weight of history is against China, Rubin offered no comment regarding whether Google has contacted the government to ascertain if the lack of access is an official blockage or merely a technical problem.

When quizzed about the YouTube block during a news conference, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry claimed to be completely unaware of any such issue, but noted that, while the government encouraged active online use, the Internet must always be managed according to law.

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