Following up on the many previous Monkey Cage posts on the use of Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools in recent protests in Iran (see “here”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/06/what_if_we_twittered_the_revol.html, “here”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/06/and_yet_more_on_twitter_and_ir.html, and “here”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/06/the_twitter_revolution_debate.html) and “elsewhere”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/04/the_twitter_revolution.html, it is worth noting that the BBC is reporting that one of China’s first steps in addressing the “protests and violence in Xinjiang province”:http://tinyurl.com/nl7kym has apparently been to curtail internet access. The “BBC writes”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8135203.stm on its web site:
bq. BBC sources in China report they have been unable to open the Twitter messaging site in Shanghai and that message boards on Xinjiang on a number of websites were not taking posts.
bq. Reports from Xinjiang suggest some internet and mobile phone services have been blocked.
bq. Analysts say the government’s so-called Great Firewall of China, which it uses to block unwanted internet material, will prevent large-scale dissemination of information but that dedicated internet users can bypass it fairly easily.