The “very important meeting” is going to be held soon. To prepare a “good environment” for the meeting, massive websites in China were shutdown. This time, much different from the previous actions, it is the whole data center instead of websites or servers that were shutdown.
Let me take few famous IDCs (Internet Data Center) as examples. Zitian, an IDC in Luoyang was shutdown completely, and all the 500 servers were unplugged from Internet, and tens of thousands of websites hosted there were inaccessible on Aug 24. Among them is the largest traffic tracking site 51.la, and this infected a very big portion of Internet websites in China.
Soon, on Aug 28, Lanmang, the other IDC in Shantou faced the same situation. Again, tens of thousands of websites were complete inaccessible. An unconfirmed news said the data center closed in Shantou has 3000 servers, and they are all closed. Lanmang has to hire lots of trunks to put all these servers and distribute the servers into many other data centers across China. I doubt this can work, since the fate of other data centers may not be better after few days. However, what else can they do? I understand how painful people feel when a site is shutdown.
After that, news about whole IDC was shutdown came one after one, and each time, at least hundreds of servers were complete unplugged from Internet. Since these IDC host about 100 to 200 websites per server, I cannot imagine how many sites were shutdown. If this continues, I guess the total number of shutdown sites may quickly be one million. In Shanghai, many data centers were very simply completely unplugged, and each time, hundreds of servers or tens of thousands of websites were disconnected from Internet. The Waigaoqiao Data Center, the largest and one of the most advanced data centers in Shanghai were completely closed these days.
That is just the beginning. The recent order from the “top guy” requires all Internet Data Center to mandatory close all “interactive sites”. These sites include any kind of blogging, any kinds of BBS, or online forum, any kinds of comment features available on blog or content site. They really mean it this time. Many of my friends have closed the comment feature of their personal blog – many not be themselves, but by the hosting company.
It seems the pressure from top really makes people take it seriously. These days, all kinds of people are busy.
- Telecom companies are busy unplugging Internet cable for data centers one by one.
- Hosting companies that were already shutdown are either busy find out solutions for the closed sites, or handle waves of customer complains, or both.
- Those hosting company or sites which were lucky enough not have been shutdown are busy shutdown “interactive sites” themselves, to avoid the whole data center run into bigger problem.
- Bigger websites are preparing contingency plans about what they will do when they were shutdown.
- All kinds of small site webmasters, or independent bloggers are busy signing up hosting package from abroad (I would be interested to know how many more orders bluehost, dreamhost, or ipowerweb got from China these days)
- Bloggers hosting their blog on BSP can only keep their finger across and pray for their little blog.
If you ask me how I feel, as a blogger in China, I would say I am very very very frustrated about it.
I’m very disappointed about the G*O*V.
Very very disappointed.
I’m now using 72pines blogging service instead of my host.
I think the next step is to close host abroad.
Please do backup everyday.
Oh, that sounds really bad.
If anyone needs any discount codes etc. from DreamHost, please let me know. I guess that is the only thing I am able to do to help.
I was wondering why i couldn’t open many foreign blogs last night.
Now i think i know the answer.
I haven’t known such things before i read this article.
I still cannot create a account in weblog.com.
Who can help me?
Let’s try to view it as a good thing. These could be what happens:
More blogs are moved to abroad.
The writters will be more open about what they write
They will attract more readers
The blogs will be blocked
People will try to use proxies, some of them like tor is unblockable in theory
And finally, with the G F W is rendered useless.
This is awful! I hope your blog won’t be shutdown.
We have a community organisation in Shanghai, with website hosted abroad, and own domain name. Yes, it has comment features, discussions, etc. It too, is blocked.
This is only delaying the inevitable; information is like a river, and it knows no boundaries.
This is sad. The top decision makers are still living in the past. This is the 21st century, they fear flow of information, but don’t understand it that it cannot possibly be blocked.
Maybe several years later, they begin to realize that they do not have the ability to block information unless to shutdown the entire Internet in China.
I have just arrived in Shanghai last week. As soon as I tried starting my blog from here I encountered some problems. blogspot.com only works with tor/vidalia and some of my friends who stay in other cities in China can’t even use tor/vidalia to write/read their blogs. As a European I am very disapointed of such ignorant methods to prevent freedom of speech. Hopefully Chinese people will try everything to regain freedom and to express their own opinions.
Maybe this article will soon be removed/censored like:
http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20070825_censorship_in_china_a_complete_guidebook.htm
Sad Sad
I finally see why i couldn’t blog at sina.com:-)
how long will it last???
what the “very important meeting” is??
We’re waiting on the checks in the main data centre in Wu Sheng lu.
Supposed to be happening in 2 days time.
So far, I’ve been backing up data to other servers, and setting up additional servers in case of issues. If they close the data centre down its a different story though.
Aggghhhhh… stress stress stress.
Lawrence / http://www.shanghaiguide.com / http://www.computersolutions.cn
Yes. The recent pressure on the cyber space is really the most obvious one in the last few years.
The website & hosting business in China is always problematic. I understand your frustrations. I’ve actually turned down one of my best friends for hosting, simply because I know for a fact what kind of content he planned on having, and knew for a fact that it would eventually get his site, and possibly my servers blocked. In that sense, why host in mainland China when you can host in Hong Kong China? My servers come from there, simply to avoid China’s scrutiny (so far… I know this can change at any given time.) That, and during the internet crash of last december, HK servers were unaffected. Need some hosting? Give us a shot!
Eric
They are making a very obvious mistake.
Unfortunately our site is one of servers which got unplugged in Waigaoqiao Data Center.
The most ridiculous thing is that they only found very few servers have questionable information, and they closed the whole center down.
Thousands of servers have been unplugged for 3 days, and still no certain answer were given by the authorities. I wonder how Internet business can grow in such a fragile environment.
For all the bloggers in the world and in China, this a retrograde step in the culture and not only affects China but the whole world, it is true that if you blog, you should have something worthy to say but why to deny this access to the whole population? Why do they do this….??? Only one terrible but undeniable answer!!!
FEARRRRRRR!!
They fear the people, their ideas, their complaints.
When will the govnt from the world (and obviously china!) realize that if they really work well their people will be truly happy and there wont be any need of being afraid!!!!
If the fear is that they know the are not doing things right!
Good luck Jianshuo! Pls dont disappear, you are my inspiration!!!
The best!!! And let’s keep fighting!!!
You are turning to a sensitive subject as the ‘very important meeting’ is coming soon.
I sadly was quite right, when I was afraid that this article is also deleted…. in fact, this article can not be found anymore on your blog, only if you have the direct URL.
Jia You!
Do you know why our G*o*v hate “Junk Mail” ?
Anything can be use as media they all hate…
Your post has on internet marketing is definitely true. Internet marketing has opened new ways of attracting visitors to the website giving the webmasters a way of earning cash as well as web status. Let’s see what the future holds for internet marketing.
I cannot express my feelings when I hear this. It is a pity that China leads such a policy. It is shamful that the uathorities are afraid of some comments. Well, I read a book about The Soviet Union. It can be downloaded from pdf SE http://www.pdfok.com . As we know it collapsed. The same will be with China. You know the country has all perspectives to become the world’s leader but because of such pressure on people it will lose. Most of all people value freedom and the communist party is not able to give it.
I sadly was quite right, when I was afraid that this article is also deleted…. in fact, this article can not be found anymore on your blog, only if you have the direct URL.Well, I read a book about The Soviet Union. It can be downloaded from http://www.downloadtorrents.org