Page 195 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 6. The Xiamen PX plant event

Figure 35. Webpage screenshot of Youtube.com when using a Chinese IP address.
On 6 August 2009, an article in China National Defence News pointed out that
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are tools that could be used for propaganda by
hostile western forces and declared that the government should ‘speedup the improve-

ment in network isolation, censoring, locking and counter striking online attacks’.
Since then, YouTube has remained blocked in China, but there have been reports of in-
termittent access for a short period, probably due to modifications to the Great Firewall,
technical faults or the updated technology from the service provider.
Despite this censorship, many media sites and TV stations had their official chan-

nel on YouTube, including the CCTV and a number of Weibo accounts share videos on
YouTube and some few video sites have a special column for content on YouTube. As
with all the information control mechanisms by the Chinese government, people can

find a way to bypass the censor system and access the content they wish, but it requires
advanced technical skills. It is uncertain whether the Great Firewall is not sufficient
to completely block foreign media sites, or if the government has changed its attitude
from zero tolerance to a tacit permission.
The attitude of the Chinese government towards foreign websites is very strict. A

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