The Guardian’s website has been blocked in China,
Must be that, right? Can’t think of any other reason.
A more accurate point being that it’s actually true too. Chinese media doesn’t get to talk about local inequality – which is much higher than ours – for example.
Point of pride, mine was banned there too 🙂
Not that obscure travelogues are likely to bring down the CCP, but every little helps …
My business website was blocked, according to my HK clients whenever they crossed the border, and that’s simply far too small and niche to have been censored deliberately. Had no content that could possibly be deemed political either. My guess is it was part of a range block or it was flagged by an algorithm (for instance it was in WordPress and had a blog component).
Actually on a trade law level, isn’t there an issue here potentially? If China cuts a trade deal with your country and you want to export there but your business website is blocked, that’s not ideal for getting clients. For someone like the Guardian it is even worse because displaying their website and accompanying advertising basically *is* what their business model in a country like China would be (they aren’t going to be flogging many of their extortionate “come to London to learn how to write polemic with Polly” courses there for example), though I presume foreign media gets short shrift when China negotiates its trade agreements.
I rather like the Guardian nowadays , its funny how the alignment has changed. It used to be the Times Telegraph FT and Sun against the Guardian Mirror Independent and (pssst) much of the BBC.
Now it is the Times FT and Guardian against the Telegraph Sun and Mirror with the BBC so desperate to save itself it has no values at all.
The old left / right split is gone we now have a culture war mixed in with the old economic fault lines.
Fully enough it looks a lot more European
They had a Tiananmen story the other day. That’s probably why.
MBE,
They will tell you to get a locally-hosted site. Even western corporate VPNs in China are great-firewalled, and it’s now illegal for the unwashed to use a VPN. They’ve thought about pretty much everything.
@BiG
Yes it makes a lot of sense, not least since if you’re serious about sales in China you may want a Chinese-language site (not necessarily if like me you sell services and only provide them in English anyway) and there might be some things like maps and placenames you want to differentiate (e.g. status of Taiwan) on your Chinese site. But still, for small firms or one-man-bands like me, it’s a pretty crappy trade barrier. I wouldn’t want to pay a web developer in every single country I’ve sold services to. In many cases it simply wouldn’t be worth the hassle.
Unsurprisingly, only western democracies can tolerate The Guardian’s decadent pap.
The Groan – Have Pity For Suzanne
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/its-lefties-like-you-suzanne-who-have-dragged-down-our-schools/
Sorry, no pity here; your type created this abomination.
Yup it’s definitely blocked. Noticed the other day that only the front page but no articles would load, now nothing.
Everyday it seems another site gets blocked. Was Wikipedia about a month ago.
Need to renew my VPN subscription.
There’s a certain smug satisfaction in seeing China doing to the Graun what the Graun does to a not insubstantial proportion of my comments on the Graun.
Facepainter–no surprise that garbage like you is a Gladrag man. The traitors choice of fishwrap.
@BiG
I don’t (well, hardly ever) bother to comment on the Giradanu. The absence of a paywall means sensible comments get lost under a tidal wave of mania. A mate’s wife is a moderator there – now, that’s a job from hell!