New York Times website blocked by China

Chinese authorities have blocked access to the website of The New York Times, even while lifting some of the restrictions recently imposed on the online edition of other media outlets.

When computer users in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou tried to connect on Friday morning to nytimes.Com, they received a message that the site was not available, The Times said, adding that some users were cut off on Thursday and the blocking was still in effect on Saturday morning.

But the Chinese-language websites of BBC, Voice of America and Asiaweek, all of which had been blocked earlier this week, were accessible by Friday, the Times said. The website of Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, was blocked earlier this week and still restricted on Friday.

Chinese officials, the paper said, had few explanations for the restriction on The Times’ site. “Concerning your particular question, we're not really familiar with the details,” a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, told the paper. “Website maintenance is not within the job purview of the Foreign Ministry.” Tang Rui, an official with the government's International Press Center in Beijing, was quoted as saying that he also had no specific information. “It might be a technical problem,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Access to the website was not restricted on Friday in Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but which still allows freedom of speech, including on the Internet.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J Mathis, said there did not appear to be a technical issue.