http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=53107
CHINA: No end in sight for Wikipedia restrictions in China
Online encyclopedia has some entries about Tibet, Taiwan, but
officials block all five million articles
Dawn
Friday, September 15, 2006
Hong Kong --- Shi Zhao slides the computer mouse, making rapid-fire
clicks and in the space of a minute or so finds about a dozen minor
errors to be tweaked on Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia
that anyone can edit.
"There's really nothing to it," the 33-year-old Beijinger said with a
grin after fellow 'Wikipedians' at a conference in Hong Kong goaded
him into an impromptu demonstration of how he became king of edits on
the Chinese-language edition.
Since he discovered Wikipedia four years ago, Shi has become something
of a celebrity in the community, having made some 70,000 edits,
averaging nearly 50-a day.
Shi's feat is even greater given that technically, he should not have
access to the site. Last October, the Chinese government blocked
access to Wikipedia, which has more than five million articles in 229
languages.
In a sense, the fate of the massively popular website is nothing new.
The ruling Communist Party routinely denies access to sites it deems
subversive and filters internet pages for sensitive words.
But experts believe the block highlights a head-on clash between what
Wikipedia stands for -- free knowledge created by the people -- and
the party's obsessive control over the production and flow of
information.
The site's founder, Jimmy Wales, is outwardly hopeful that this is all
just one big misunderstanding.
"Even if you agree that some blogs should be blocked or some kinds of
propaganda should be blocked -- which I don't agree with -- but even
if you do agree with that, it still strikes me that blocking all of
Wikipedia is a huge mistake.
"It's a simple error, or a failure to understand what we're doing," he
said.
Of course, Wikipedia has entries on subjects like Tibet and Taiwan
independence, the banned Falun Gong spiritual group and the bloodily
suppressed pro-democracy protests of 1989.
But China experts, internet analysts and, deep down, Wales himself
think the block probably runs deeper than an effort to censor a
handful of sensitive articles on a largely innocuous online
encyclopedia that is the world's 16th most visited website, according
to Alexa Internet, which monitors traffic.
Date Posted: 9/15/2006