China's concern with Wikipedia was its open-edit policy as well as its content
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia was accessible again in China on Sunday 17, June after being blocked for more than 3 years, a move hailed by free media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
The main page of the encyclopedia in English-language could be displayed for the first time without using a web proxy. The Chinese-language version of Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) could be displayed too and searches for apolitical terms turned up results, but searches for subjects taboo to China's Communist leadership, such as a specific bloody date in June, remained blocked.
This incident involving students remains among the most sensitive subjects for the country's state-controlled media.
China installed a nationwide firewall and routinely blocks access to Web sites it deems subversive and filters Internet pages for sensitive words.
Blocked mainstream sites include Blogspot, Technorati, Dailymotion, Google Images and many others, often without a good reason, an automatic filter rule catches sites that are "innocent" regarding China's government issues with freedom of speech.
It was unclear why Wikipedia, blocked since October 2004, was again accessible suddenly on Father's Day and if the unban is definitive.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said he had not heard of reports regarding Wikipedia to this day, but added that China supports the development of the Internet and now has 132 million users, making it the world's second-largest Internet market.
"We manage the Internet according to our laws and regulations. We abide by our constitutional rules. This is the usual practice for all the countries in the world," spokesman Li Zhe told a news conference.
Rights groups have often accused Western Internet companies of compromising their ethical principles by censoring searches and blog titles in order to do business in China. But Reporters Without Borders said the example of Wikipedia, whose founder Jimmy Wales has preached a strategy of patience in dealing with Chinese authorities, showed that if a foreign company stood firm, Beijing would eventually yield.
"The Chinese government is pragmatic and does not wish to do without foreign businesses in the Internet sector," the Paris-based group said in a statement.
"There is therefore obviously room for negotiation for the US companies who are willing to."
Despite the ban on Wikipedia, which is editable by anyone, a growing community of Chinese users had used proxy servers and other tricks to gain access to the site. Perhaps the Chinese government is coming to terms with a banning policy which is ineffective at best and gives a bad image of rising China.
It was not only the encyclopedia's content that worried the Chinese government, but Wikipedia's openness about the editorial process, which has a strong community-building effect among editors who can quickly mobilize to create content. This worry seems to have gone away, but for how long?
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