The New York Times is Currently Unavailable from Weifang, Shandong
The New York Times is currently unavailable from here in Weifang, though still accessible via proxy server. The New York Times has remained unblocked in China since reporters in a private interview with Jiang Zemin specifically asked about the block and he replied that he would look into the matter. I’ll update when it becomes available again.
Update Wed April 5, AM: NYTimes is still inaccessible, though the behavior of the website is very strange – something I’ve never seen before. The title of the webpage loads in my browser, “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Media”, but nothing else loads. At first I attributed this to my computer’s cache, but noticed that it persisted even after emptying the cache. Therefore, I tried loading it in several different browsers to see if it was not in fact a problem with my browser, but got the same result in some browsers. It seems that the header of the site is being allowed to load but the content is what is actually getting blocked, rather than simply the domain, www.nytimes.com. When I try reloading again I get nothing.
Update Wed April 6, PM: NYTimes remains inaccessible in Weifang. I have tried to find other reports of a block on NYTimes in China but so far have not found any. I’ll post here if I find any other reports of block on NYTimes in China with a link to the report.
Update 2 Wed April 6, PM: I emailed Fons Tuinstra of China Herald about my problem accessing the NYTimes and here is what he had to say: “I checked the connection to the New York Times from both Shanghai and Beijing. They did report some connection problems, but they were both located in the US, not in China. I did not see any other reports on the NY Times being unavailable.” After reading this I tried linking to an NYTimes page within the site, not just their homepage, and it worked. It seems that has kicked the connection back into working order as well now and I am again able to access their homepage too.
Update 3 Sun April 9, AM: Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei reports that some readers have emailed him concerning problems accessing The New York Times in some parts of China, such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Urumqi and Shenyang. It remains unclear if this is an intentional block or a technical glitch, though I am persuaded to think the latter, since individual articles remain accessible.
Update 4 Thu April 12, AM: The NYTimes.com homepage is again accessible from Weifang.
Tags China, NYTimes, Censorship
