The Chinese government has blocked many popular international websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. Why? Well, first of all, China doesn’t want these websites, which contain Western culture, to “pollute” the mindsets of the Chinese. And with the presence of Facebook and YouTube in China, it would be tough for local companies to succeed. Another reason is that the government wouldn’t be able to collect tax from tpopular social networking websites whereas they can from local websites.
However, the internet censorship law isn’t improving at all. Instead, it’s getting stricter, hence making it difficult for international internet companies/websites to prosper in China.
The folks at Information is Beautiful have created an interesting infographic that lists what keywords (highlighted in red; shows a map that looks like China) and websites (in gray) are currently censored or blocked in mainland China.
