Update 2/10: TechCrunch is once again available in China. We are standing down our forces and resuming commercial activity.
Over the past 48 hours, and perhaps longer, it appears that TechCrunch is being blocked inside China. We’ve confirmed this with contacts and tipsters inside China who can no longer access our site, as well as through Web tools such as WebsitePulse and Just Ping which pings sites from inside China’s Great Firewall.
Both of those services indicate that, at least in Shanghai, readers cannot connect to TechCrunch. Chinese readers have reported problems accessing the site in the past as well.
If you are located in China and you can read this, please let us know in comments.
We are not really sure why we are being blocked. Recently, we’ve covered Google’s decision to to perhaps stop doing business in China following a cyberattack on its servers in the country, but we don’t think that is it.
Another possibility, which borders on the absurd, is that on Friday Michael put up a humorous post comparing a Google employee who stopped his SUV because he was talking on his cell phone to the Tank Man who famously blocked Chinese tanks at Tiananmen Square. The title of the post: “A Googler Has His Tiananmen Square Moment.” He followed up with another light weekend post, featuring pictures of him and Robert Scoble re-enacting the incident. That post also had the word “Tiananmen” in the title.
They were just goofing off, but perhaps the Chinese government didn’t think it was funny. China still has a policy of wiping out all references on the Web to the Tank Man and the Tiananmen uprising of two decades ago. China blocked Twitter on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen last summer, and has blocked Facebook, Bing and other sites during times of unrest. Our post hardly compares.
Again, to be clear, this is all speculation on our part. We don’t know exactly why we are being blocked. There are so many ways we could have offended officials in China. If a Chinese censor is reading this (and we know you are) please let us know what we did via comments or an email.
Photo credit: Flickr/ Michael Mooney
Why you’re being blocked? Because China is pathetic. I’d see it as a compliment.
Agreed. Those are some backward ass, strange people.
Now you’re being a racist ass, strange guy. It’s not the people you fool, authoritarian government is oppressive everywhere it is in use.
no he’s not being a racist ass.
would you be a racist if you criticized nazis?
strange crazy folks exist every where, in every race.
and it IS the people. the “people” can F up the government any time they want. you can’t stop a billion people.
the nazis could have stopped hitler by F-ing him up. but they didn’t because they were pansies.
BUT, at the same time Americans are becoming some strange-ass people also. for example, no american has the right to criticize any country for contributing to global warming.
Also, Hilary Clinton is a douche-bag. why would you criticize china for spying on its citizens, when in the US, the government has those same rights to spy on us right now.
freedom is a relative thing. For example, what would the US government do if the native americans all want their country back? We like to tell the chinese that they should “free tibet.” Before we say that, we should give a large portion of our country back to the native americans so they can have their own nation.
erick, this previous post by “joe” and all of the posts by “george” are all written by me.
you should delete them also, if you want to delete all posts of mine.
you should also block me permanently from commenting on your posts since you clearly believe that information should be controlled by you.
OR: you could learn how to handle a little criticism.
also, all 7 the posts by “jamm” and “gosaints” if there are any left, were all by me.
they outline some of the criticisms i have with the article. if you don’t want people to see your weaknesses, please delete them.
GOOD JOB ERIC,
LOL!! KEEP BlOCKING THAT LOSER’S COMMENTS!!!!
GO ERIC! GO ERIC!
BLOCK THAT INFORMATION FROM COMING ONTO THE COMMENTS!!!
erick,
i apologize for being a doofus. i just wanted to prove a point. lol. i’m just kidding. you have every right to control the comments.
i respect your articles and this website.
There are more Chinese online than Americans. That’s a scary thought, eh?
Looks like you just lost a huge chunk of traffic.
Way to go.
Go figure, all that ass kissing to the Chinese censor in Erick’s last paragraph wasn’t nearly enough. Now you got John mocking you for losing that ‘huge chunk of traffic’.
If only you didn’t mention an atrocity in your title, perhaps. Tienanmen massacre never happened, you ignorant fool. Onwards the mighty middle kingdom!
Free South Africa !!!
Justice For All!!
Free Internet For South Africa !!!
Techcrunch,
please stop deleting my posts.
think about how ironic it is that you are deleting my posts on your article criticizing china for blocking your site.
you are RETARDED if you continue to do so.
I doubt whether TC gets a significant traffic from China. Alexa says it gets 2.7% traffic from china, that’s not much?
The real reason that china is blocking techcrunch is because, like most of us, they have come to realize that techcrunch has no substance. It should be called NoKnowledgeOnlyMoronicIdioticOpinionsCrunch.
They can always get around the blocking by using web proxies such as proxy.com, anonymizer.com, suresome.com …
I’m afraid these proxy sites are also blocked.
It’s possible that a government that will murder its own citizens doesn’t want it broadcasted to those same citizens.
the chinese have a right to block techcrunch and other information.
just like techcrunch will delete your comments if you support giving the native americans their own nation.
THANK YOU CHINA FOR STANDING UP TO EUROPEANS (so-called Americans).
China, you have over 5,000 years of civilization WITHOUT COLONIALISM….whereas European-descent people have had to enslave, steal, kill, rape, swindle, and cheat their way into AMERICA…CANADA…SOUTH AFRICA….AUSTRALIA….etc…
Thank you China for showing how to succeed from WITHIN, whereas Europeans have only succeed AFTER 1492 when they terrorized and murdered Native Peoples around the Earth.
These “American” hypocrites are screaming about “freedom” as they continue to CARPET BOMB the Middle East for oil and allow Saudi Arabia to oppress its people.
Thank you China!
Yes, Thank you China for never being mean to Native Peoples like the Europeans.
Thank you for letting Tibet live in peace.
Thank you for letting Uygurs in East Turkestan live in peace.
Thank you for letting your students protest and voice your opinions, instead of running them over with tanks and machine gunning them down.
We sing your praise.
Seriously? WTF! China blocked TC. For what reason? For doing the Tianamen spoof? Let me guess? Those couple of posts about “Google VS China” epic battle? Gee..
What a good way to end the year! (Chinese calendar)
We can now make fun of people in China and they will never know.
Yes, but they’ve also hacked Rackspace. So, they’ve got commenter’s IP address.
dum dum dum!! (scary music in the background)
yeah, but why can’t TC see this as a joke?
Mike saw the Tiananmen square moment with all humour but why not this?
I’m seeing more fun in this than that.
Since we’re discussing the #GFW here, your “absurd” hypothesis is probably actually the most accurate one. Oh, Net Nanny, is there any website you won’t spank and send to bed without any supper?
(in China; using VPN)
I am in China and can access the site, however quite slow. Since I normally use a VPN, I dunno if its slower than usual.
I am a few hours from Shanghai.
I guess you Tiananmen post maybe the reason, since you showed a photo of a guy in front of tanks. I guess they have some sort of image search to find these and similar pics and block sites automatically.
Usually it helps to contact the chinese Internet Police and ask for the reason.
Lets see if the post goes through…
Image matching ? No, they are using a keyword spotting system. Tiananmen & Tankman triggered it.
Yes, the absurd hypothesis is actually the most likely. When I saw the famous photo posted here my first thought was that China would block the site. They are serious about this business. Tiananmen square NEVER HAPPENED.
Haha that is hilarious. I was going to comment on the Tiananmen Square post along the lines of “expect the number of Chinese visitors to your site to drop to 0 in the coming days!”.
Hi, I’m in Shanghai … 1) report on TC status: it’s up, but it loads extreeeemly slowly when not on VPN, this is weird because most other blocked sites (fb/twitter) just lead to ‘Server not found’ error
2) this whole thread and the ‘Tiananmen cell phone funny thread’ (http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/06/the-ridiculous-becomes-the-absurd-tiananmen/) that came before it are completely fucked and I hope China _has_ screwed with TC just to prove a point.** Tiananmen *is* a very sensitive topic here, not only as a historical issue but as a one that represents an ongoing struggle that continues in the daily lives of citizens here in the present. Arrington and most of his readership don’t seem to understand this or simply don’t care. and belittling the slip up of making light of Tiananmen and the tank man doesn’t help.
one analogy that could resonate with someone with a U.S. world view to try to explain why this is a lame thread to begin with is: if someone was pictured as being extremely skinny and making a joke that s/he was having a ‘holocaust’ moment .. that just wouldn’t be funny (OK it may be funny in an extremely sick and dark humor kind of way) but you still wouldn’t post and repost on TC and joke about it becoming the next big internet meme. Not funny.
The tank guy represents standing up to the government, something that is still not allowed in China, and, what happened during the Tiananmen massacre is a devastating tragedy that was enacted by the same Government that is in place today. (I’m not commenting on the ethics of the incident here, but rather trying to explain the relevance or at least encourage further research by Arrington and TC readers).
**(I actually think the problem is more likely due to TC using wordpress servers and automatically being fed through heavier internet screening as a result but that’s another story)
> I hope China _has_ screwed with TC just to prove a point
who. cares.
and what point would that be? that they’re a totalitarian government that murders its own citizens and tries to cover it up?
i don’t want to read any website that succumbs to pressure from an authoritarian regime as to what it can and cannot say.
If TC were indeed blocked by the fascist Chinese government, I would wear it as a badge of honor and make no apologies for it.
@VV: I think you missed the point of my post. please hear me out.
The main point I was making was that people should open their minds a little bit and seek to understand what is going on in china and in their own country (assuming it is america, but all countries have their issues) before bashing the hell out of china and making light hearted jokes about an issue that is not “light” or “humorous” at all.
First of all, before you go bashing every other countries totalitarian governments take a look at the U.S. it is not run by a perfect, peaceful regime itself. look back the Iran-Contras Affair and Nicaraguan massacres, think about the ‘ethics’ of dropping two nukes killing 100,000’s of civilians in the blink of an eye.. and of course the current ongoing wars in iraq and afgh. I’m not saying I’m for or against any of these things, but they too lie in the grey moral and ethical areas!! and if you really want to raise humanitarian issues, focus on your own government, be grateful you live in a democracy and work to fix the broken system in the U.S… there are millions of people living without access to basic minimum health care nor education in that wealthiest nation on earth!! don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of the U.S. in fact I think it is the greatest nation on the planet, but it still has issues.
Secondly, Tiananmen was a day when the Chinese Gov’t opened fire on its own people to suppress civilian protests for democritization. I have met people in China whose friends and family members were killed or disappeared on that day, many others whose families fled china in the weeks+months following, and others who are friends with some of the organizers of Tiananmen who are still under house arrest or worse. THIS IS NOT A TOPIC TO MAKE LIGHTHEARTED JOKES ABOUT. SHOW SOME FUCKING RESPECT!
that’s all I’m saying… or at least show some willingness to look to the other side and understand WHY this is an issue. show some empathy THINK about what is happening instead of reacting
thanks for hearing me out. I genuinely hope my words can help people to make some effort to think about other peoples’ perspectives on polarized, sensitive issues.
So are you going to delete the post and say sorry to the Chinese Government?
Meh. I just checked my blog, it’s not being blocked. Maybe I have to get a little more agressive.
I hope they will never do like Google or Microsoft
If TC does that, I for one will never visit the site again.
No, we just want to get another post out of this
erick,
you say you don’t know why you are being blocked by china.
i say the same thing: why am i being blocked from commenting on your post.
same thing dude.
you have no credibility anymore
i would love a reply erick.
you delete my posts, yet you complain about china blocking techcrunch.
do you understand how hypocritical that really is?
OMG, the Chinese censors have taken over our comment moderation!
I do n’t expect the country that blocks technological news to be move forward in latest technology
By blocking sites like Techcrunch ,Chinese Government has put a self goal against them itself..
China Govt is quite a Joke, because they want to block everything which speaks the truth, same applies to Google, Techcrunch etc and companies like Microsoft keep following their useless rules.
A day will come when the people will demand everything and govt will have to move back!
I thing the problem it the MSG in the Chinese food it so much it cuase many webside to go down.
see what happens when arrington drives and talks on cell. What a douche – lol. jj
China is so anal.
TC was probably blocked by the automated systems. I’ve seen this happen if the “bad” text passes through the great firewall enough times. I’m guessing there is then a visual review of the content/site from one of the 10’s of thousands of “content police”.
Michael’s post is most likely I’d say. You really don’t talk about the square here in China. It’s known not to write about it on forums or blogs. The party does not have greatest sense of humour about it. Google stuff is not a problem ….. yet.
It’s not convenient but most people that would read TechCrunch can find there way over the Great Firewall
It makes sense. The Government of China is trying to erase the event from the public consciousness. Most people misinterpret that as an act targeted towards adults but it’s really one targeted at children. Adults won’t forget the incident but if no one’s allowed to mention it than Children will never know about it and within a generation you can make an atrocity virtually disappear from the public consciousness.
As silly as blocking the Techcrunch post might seem to us it would get a child in China to ask “What does that mean” and once that happens the whole point of the block has been defeated.
Excellent comment
adults WILL forget the incident.
we can all forget many things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_Male
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
the truth, tom, is that neither you nor I care about other people.
that is why we can live.
if we truly cared, our minds would be exploding right now from the stress of the atrocities in any single US state alone going on currently. such as cancer in pompton lakes, nj. or poverty and crime in newark.
the truth is that the US government is doing horrible things all the time. even right now. like the sexual abuse of prisoners.
fortunately, neither you nor i care about it enough to do anything beyond commenting about it on techcrunch.
On the plus side, my adult forum still isn’t blocked by China. Note to self: Must try harder.
Congrats anyway TC. You know you’ve made it when China blocks you.
With all my anti-China comments here I expect my site to be “hacked” sooner or later..
Hey TC, I’m felix, a everyday TC reader. I’m in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China. And I can access your website.
Great! Do you access the Internet via a VPN?
Sorry Erick, sorry this time. I forgot that I used some tool similar to VPN. I can’t access TC without the tool, you are blocked.
Well thank you for finding a way around the Great Firewall.
Yeah I’m sorry that we can’t access the internet freely.
They use a lot of proxies..
Erick one of my best friend is in China now and he can connect without VPN or any DNS trick
Check if you were recently hacked as well!
See, that’s kind of funny, because TechCrunch WAS recently hacked… http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/techcrunch-hacked/
We did not block your website bacause you were broadcasting images of the Tiananmen protester standing in front of a tank. We did it because of your biased tech reporting.
The Chinese people are fed up with the unrelenting fanboyism on Techcrunch. When Google farts, you call it perfume; when Apple takes a dump, you swoon in delight. And when Twitter has diarrhea, you literally lap it up.
We want to see more favorable coverage of Microsoft, Nokia, and Motorola from now on. We forbid you to ever again mention the iPad (its allusions to feminine products are offensive to the good sisters of the Revolutionary Brigade).
If Facebook ever again wins an award at one of your TechCrunch events, we will nuke Silicon Valley. You must cover startups that actually make something useful, rather than the latest me-too social/streaming/geolocation/music-playlist copycat product.
Last but not least, to get your site unblocked, Michael Arrington must go to the Microsoft Campus (he must not use his cellphone while driving or we will nuke Silicon Valley), find Steve Ballmer’s office, kneel down behind him, pucker up and plant a big, wet smooch on Big Steve’s behind.
It’s the least he could do to appease the poor man’s hurt feelings and redress the balance of Steve Jobs idolatry at TC.
LOL..
Is this real?
LOL. are YOU real??? HAHHAA LOL.
LOLLOL!!!
A++ would LOL again, sir.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLL!
Tiananmen Square
Overthrow China
Free Tibet
There. That should get their attention.
you forgot Dalai Lama
What about Taiwan?
FREE AMERICA. GIVE THE US BACK TO THE NATIVE AMERICANS.
PAY REPARATIONS TO BLACKS FOR SLAVERY. $1 Million Each.
FREE TIBET????? And hand it back to the feudalistic overlords of the Lama Monks?
FREE AMERICA INSTEAD!
Europeans have been occupying it for over 400 years.
They have killed Native peoples, stolen land, forced us onto reservations, destroyed our cultures, languages, leadership…and they continue to BOMB the Middle East out of ARROGANCE that they stand for freedom.
GOOD FOR YOU CHINA!
BAN THESE BARBARIANS WITHOUT MORALS!
Thank god for the Chinese…they never enslaved Africans, never killed 6 million Jews, never exterminated other races, never passed Apartheid laws, never bombed the Middle East…..THANK GOD FOR CHINA.
How about tickets back to Africa all around?
I am in Shenzhen, China and reading this via our datacenter / proxies in Hong Kong. From what I have observed, the government here tries to take extra precautions around the major holidays. We have just started a two week period celebrating Chinese New Year – perhaps the most important of the local holidays.
The China Firewall appears to try to censor specific politically sensitive information (your article referenced this) together with pornography related sites. I suspect that the articles you mentioned were caught by keywords, rather than a person actually reading, but that is just a guess on my part.
The reality is that current censors are doing more harm than good to Chinese businesses and education, IMHO. Perhaps when this is better understood policies will change. We have seen similar improvements elsewhere in China over the past years, so there is good reason for hope.
Tim
Hilarious that China censors porn but it’s people have multiplied to over 1.3 billion people. Can you imagine if they had access to porn?? They’d be at atleast 3 billion people.
Naive comment. There is a difference between porn (sex for hobby) and duty (sex for procreation).
In fact, a significant number of children in China are conceived with no sex at all. They are conceived through IVF. The Chinese prefer IVF to traditional sex for procreation because the former allows for gender selection.
Hey, would you please try not creeping us out like that.
I thought he was going to say they prefer IVF because sex is dirty, or that it was a productivity killer for the empire
Hmm…. Maybe there is an invite only CrunchPorn, that we don’t know about. That’s why they got blocked.
Don’t expect too much. Some policies will never change. China(or I should say chinese government) never compromises.
PS. I’m in Shenzhen china using VPN.
Yes, the word Tiennamen repeated itself 1287 times on the website techrunch.com in the past week.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
I will not say Tiananmen anymore.
Hey, I am in Beijing and I can not get access to TC.
Right now I am using VPN to comment.
I can see the humor in how ridiculous a google campus incident could lead to banishment, but then again, its really not that funny at all. Even our comments here are too “sensitive” for this crazy firewall.
Well at least my cousin in china can still communicate with me via shoutbox on PWNED.COM
thx god there not blocked yet. Gamers FTW!
Bad News Bears… the Great Firewall of China and associated tech blockery almost certainly has picked up on the Tiananmen Square reference.
So now what? you gonna look at the ‘potential’ business opportunity and stop being from free world?
We need a definite answer TechCrunch. You sound scared.
Hardly, dude. If they were, it would just have been removed instead of saying China has no sense of humor.
Wow, someone finally blocked your piss poor coverage of technology? Who would have thunk it?
I thunk you rye.
Or maybe it was because of @arrington’s rant on Twitter about how much power the Chinese government has over the US economy.
China is now industrialized. That must mean it is civilized according to many. Just as, presumably, Nazi Germany was civilized because it was also highly industrialized, so much so that the U.S. was in competition with Russia to get the German rocket scientists right after WW2.
You’re kidding right? “If a Chinese censor is reading this (and we know you are) please let us know what we did via comments or an email.” – that would be a first.
Probably the exact keywords (“Tiananmen Square” and “Tank Man”) you indicated in the post caused the website to be flagged as inappropriate. The process is mostly automated.
yeah, that was (another) joke. But who knows, maybe they do read TC. We’re back up again inside the Firewall.
So here….we got a reader from Shenzhen…..saying it is not blocked……what’s the true story?
You guys have recently moved to wordpress.com for hosting and I think wordpress is banned in China. Could be due to that also.
It’s not because of wordpress.com. Without VPN, I can still access wordpress.com but TC, nope.
I think Mr. Dassani made a good point – is it true?
The Chinese is using a filtering system that filters out any websites that has the keywords “Tiananmen Square” and “Tank Man”, among others. Lets flood their filter by spamming these keywords in a ton of different websites to confuse their system.
Maybe there should be a continual campaign by people worldwide to submit blog posts and comments on every site possible referring to Tiananmen Square, chinese censorship and other “bad” words and just let the great firewall take care of the rest. Within days all of China would be completely cut off from the rest of the web. If people keep the campaign going then either the firewall will have to get smarter or the ruling party will need to rethink their approach to censorship.
shanghai,china. I can access your site without vpn!
“….and for the vanity of the king, a kingdom was lost.”
mr arrington. lets see what you do about that…you did preach google.
Or MAYBE China thinks you shouldn’t drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time, too. Can’t we believe, for once, that China wants to the right thing here?