China Blocks Twitter

Another brick in the great firewall of China just got topped into place as China blocks Twitter. Apparently, it’s part of the Communist Party’s celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, known to Party officials as the June Fourth Incident.

Of course, Google’s Blogspot and YouTube as well as images repository Flickr are already blocked for net users in China. There are reports that Microsoft’s Hotmail web emailing system and even its newly launched search engine Bing are blocked too.

A Chinese friend, Andrew Sun, tells me these are ‘routine’ blocking ‘punishments’ and suspects, as do many other observers, that the recent blockage of Twitter is an advance defense strategy against the likely trending of Tiananmen Square commentary on the site and virtual protests against lethal oppression.

As a scientist who lives and works in China and is happy to do so, Sun is curious as to why the Party is so sensitive this year. “Blocking behavior in fact reminds people of this historical event,” he says, “and the Party usually behaves in a limited way around June each year.” So, this is an unusual and fearful response to the presence of Twitter.

Sun says that the lack of freedom of speech in China is not as strict as it once was at some levels. He adds that he can freely guess the reasons for the blockage on http://sciencenet.cn (e.g. Zhiming “ZM” Wang, Editor of Nanoscale Research Letters published here just recently) and other forums without his comments being deleted instantly. However, direct and negative discussion about “that” part of China’s history is still (of course) not allowed, he adds.

“The Party seems to only block ‘foreign’ sources of information,” he says, “The country is going to celebrate its 60th birthday this year, maybe the Party wants a ‘cleaner’ public opinion environment during this period.”

It is almost 100% certain that Tiananmen Square will be the top trending phrase on Twitter on Thursday. Official numbers for deaths from the start of protests in April 1989 that culminated on June 4 claim 241 dead and 7000 injured. At the time, rapid response Chinese Red Cross figures released suggested the number murdered by the State was closer to 2600.