Financial Times FT.com

Websites blocked ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

By Joseph Menn, David Gelles and Richard Waters in San Francisco

Published: June 3 2009 00:16 | Last updated: June 3 2009 00:16

In blocking access to a large number of websites ahead of Thursday’s 20th anniversary of suppression of Tiananmen Square protests, officials within the Chinese government are trying to strike a unique but pragmatic balance.

They probably are going farther then ever before, cutting off citizens from sites as varied as Yahoo’s photo service Flickr.com, Microsoft’s Hotmail e-mail system and current Silicon Valley mascot Twitter, which rapidly broadcasts 140-character statements to internet subscribers. Yet they appear to be leaving social networking sites MySpace and Facebook alone.

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