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Websites Suddenly Blocked in China? This may be Why -UPDATED

by René | April 28, 2007 at 01:11 pm | 510 views | 6 comments

UPDATE: The Great FireWall of China website is no longer offering a test, since the test is no longer reliable.

There is another site you can try to see if your site is blocked: Website Test

Got a question below about what to do about it, from a webhost provider, the only idea I have is for the provider to check out the sites being hosted, and check your site's keywords.

Wikipedia has two pages that may help: List of blocked sites and The Golden Shield, which has some ideas on how to get around it.

If: The access to a certain IP address is denied. If the target Web site is hosted in a shared hosting server, all Web sites on the same server will be blocked.

One reporter allegedly, and incorrectly, IDed the Virginia Tech shooter as a Chinese with a Shanghai visa.

Many web links to outside news of the shooting were blocked to limit subsequent details from reaching China.

...only one — journalist in the U.S. identified the killer publicly and quickly as a student from China who had recently been given his visa in Shanghai. During the long night after the shooting U.S. time, which was daytime Tuesday in China, that report was picked up — surprise! — by Fox news and a few smaller U.S. outlets, and, via web news sites, it quickly made its way to China.

Some websites found themselves suddenly blocked in China. Like mine, The only reason I can figure out is my link on my blog to NowPublic.com with its breaking news, though I did not see any stories on Now Public with any reports from that source.

This is why it is so important to check your sources. Drill down, go to the original stories, the actual sources, make sure you are reporting correctly, not just someone's 'interesting' post on a blog.

Yes, it takes time, even on breaking news, this is still important, as rumors fly and are sometimes totally unfounded.

Don't be a 'party-circuit' reporter.

See the reports about this issue: The Great Wall of China (Try googling for 'blocked sites' or 'blocked sites in China')

Just checked on NowPublic.com, and, though it was blocked in China for a while it is now available. Good job, Now Public. (This may no longer be true, as there have been many stories here about Tibet, etc.)

Test your own sites at Great Wall of China Test site ( this site no longer has an operational test)

An interesting sidebar to this story is how many countries actually do website blocking: one prominent one: Saudi Arabia)

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ernie ramirez (not verified)

at 05:45 on July 16th, 2008

I have a bunch of sites my company does web design and all my sites are blocked in China www.newyorkwebdesigns.net www.newyorkcheaphosting.com is there a way around this i want to do business in CHINA my sites are not news relate sites or blogs?? any thoughts?

thanks

René

at 12:08 on July 16th, 2008

See my UPDATES on this story. Hope that helps.

jamessta

at 10:08 on July 23rd, 2008

First thing I would check is to see if other sites hosted by the same ISP as you are blocked too - this being the case, there is likely content on this ip range the ISP is using that is causing the block to your site

Another thing to watch for is use of dynamic DNS - these services are routinely 'abused' within China to avoid the firewall and are low hanging fruit if you want to disrupt such behavior

René

at 10:44 on July 23rd, 2008

Good tips, thanks.

Benzodiazepine

at 02:54 on August 26th, 2008

Once i've heard things about China was having some policy about blocking Google,

for they didnt really want their people to be too educated.

So .. thousand or more sites had been blocked since.

It could have been just a silly rumor, but who knows.

René

at 10:36 on August 28th, 2008

Here's another test site to see if your website or IP is blocked Behind the Great Firewall of China. There's quite a list on the Wikipedia blocked links and the Golden Shield. The blocked list also shows which ones are now unblocked and the Golden Shield how to get around the blocks.