China Blocks Web Access to Times After Article

By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access early Friday morning to the Chinese-language Web site of The New York Times from computers in mainland China and gradually halted most access to the English-language site as well after the news organization posted an article in both languages describing wealth accumulated by the family of the country’s prime minister.
The authorities were also blocking attempts to mention The Times or the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in postings on Sina Weibo, an extremely popular mini-blogging service in China that resembles Twitter.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman on duty in Beijing early Friday morning did not immediately answer phone calls for comment.
China maintains the world’s most extensive and sophisticated system for Internet censorship, employing tens of thousands of people to monitor what is said, delete entries that contravene the country’s extensive and unpublished regulations and even write new entries that are favorable to the government.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow specializing in Internet free expression and privacy issues at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan group headquartered in Washington, said that the Chinese interruption of Internet access was typical of the response to information that offended leaders.
“This is what they do: they get mad, they block you,” she said.
The English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times are hosted on servers outside mainland China.
A spokeswoman for The Times, Eileen Murphy, expressed disappointment that Internet access had been blocked and noted that the Chinese-language Web site had attracted “great interest” in China.
“We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we will ask the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism,” she said in a statement, adding, “We will continue to report and translate stories applying the same journalistic standards that are upheld across The New York Times.”
By midmorning on Friday in China, access to both the English- and Chinese-language Web sites was blocked from all 31 cities in mainland