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China blocking 10 percent of Internet
By Grant Holloway
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The Chinese government could be blocking as much as 10 percent of the Internet from the nation's estimated 45 million users, a comprehensive new U.S.-based study finds. Sites dealing with Taiwan, Tibet and dissidents were the most commonly blocked, along with news media, pornography and religious sites. Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society requested 204,012 distinct web sites, and found more than 50,000 to be inaccessible from at least one point in China on at least one occasion. Using a more conservative measure, the study found that 18,931 sites were inaccessible from at least two distinct proxy servers within China on at least two distinct days. From this, the study's authors say it would be reasonable to suggest the same proportion of censorship applied across the Internet as a whole in China. "We conclude that China does indeed block a range of web content beyond that which is sexually explicit," the authors say. "For example, we found blocking of thousands of sites offering information about news, health, education, and entertainment, as well as some 3,284 sites from Taiwan." News sites that were found to be regularly blocked include the BBC, CNN.com, ABC News and CBS News. Sites focussing on Islamic teaching, such as the Path to True Islam site, were also unavailable, as were many U.S. university sites such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'Split the difference'Sites dedicated to jazz music and motorbikes were also blocked. The researchers also found that 100 percent of sites with "keywords" of "Tibet", "Taiwan China" or "equality", were inaccessible, as were a large percentage of those featuring the keywords "freedom", "democracy" and "HIV". Using the popular Google search engine, of the top 100 results for news, 42 sites could not be reached from within China. The authors say there was evidence the government was trying to prevent the spread of unwanted material by preventing the spread of the Internet itself, "but a concomitant desire to capture the economic benefits of networked computing has led to a variety of strategies to split the difference". "For example, the government might encourage Internet access through cyber cafes rather than in private spaces so that customers' surfing can be physically monitored by others in the cafe." Chinese officials reportedly closed more than 17,000 Internet cafes late last year and ordered thousands more to install Internet surveillance software as part of a major offensive against unsupervised use of the Net.
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