Google says Youtube is being blocked in China.
The company said it first noticed traffic from China had decreased dramatically late Monday. By early Tuesday, it had dropped to nearly zero, the company said.
“We don’t know the reason for the block,” a YouTube spokesman, Scott Rubin, said. “Our government relations people are trying to resolve it.”
China routinely filters Internet content and blocks material that is critical of its policies. It selectively blocks videos from YouTube.
According to Reuters, Chinese government officials said Tuesday that they did not know about YouTube being blocked, but said that China was not afraid of the Internet.
“Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite,” a foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, according to Reuters.
Access to YouTube had been intermittent earlier in March, on the first anniversary of protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule.
Last week, the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, India, released a seven-minute video, which is being shown on YouTube, that purports to show Chinese police officers brutally beating Tibetans last March following the riots in Lhasa. There has been no independent confirmation that the footage is authentic.
