Easy come, easy go.
After all of the happy stories in the last little while about the CBC website being unblocked in China, a CBC employee was not amused to learn that the Radio-Canada site has now been blocked in China again.
Cedric Sam, an Internet Analyst for Radio-Canada, posted an article about this on his own blog in French. Here is a translated summary of the article:
“For six months, the website of Radio-Canada was blocked to internet users in Continental China. A week after Hubert Lacroix sent a letter to the Chinese Ambassador regarding this situation, the Chinese were allowed to view Radio-Canada.ca and CBC.ca.
“While on a trip in the Chinese province of Guangdong, I noticed that while in Shenzhen Radio-Canada.ca was not accessible. A “server not responding” message appeared when I tried to access both the portal site and the news site, while CBC.ca was accessible.
“Two friends in Beijing confirmed with me the next morning that the Radio-Canada website was not available there either.”
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The real question is - is anyone surprised?
Well, the Chinese Government must have heard of the censorship at the CBC that Mark Steinmetz has been doing so they could be seen as flattering him by copying him. After all, China has experienced the ban on Western Classical Music during the Cultural Revolution so might recognize a kindred soul at the CBC. Mr. Steinmetz is devolving the role classical music plays in the culture of Canada, albeit a pale imitation of what happened in China in 1968. All too soon as CBC Radio Two listeners shut off CBC there will be no classical coverage at all and the Steinmetz’s switch to weather station jazz or the Disneyfication of Canadian muzak will be complete. Why criticize China when they probably listened in on CBC and were disgusted with what they heard and said, as many in Canada have been saying, no thanks.
Maybe radio-canada.ca’s website was just down at the time
I’m surprised. It’s the CBC, remember? Doesn’t exactly have much of an international influence…especially Radio-Canada. The net minders here in China must be fearful of the Quebetan separatists. Or wait, maybe they’ve changed it to Quebecistan and the evil Partie Clique? No matter. Blocking the site is inconvenient but does not totally cut off access. Not sure why they’d even bother.
Speaking of censorship, where the hell did the reader comments and recommend feature go? CBC going for retro web 1.0 again…one way journalism…dull.