China Blocks Access to Websites & Blogs for Olympic Games

China has blocked access to all Blogger blogs ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games that begin in Beijing three months from now.

We conducted connectivity tests using three different nodes in China and none of them could connect to blogspot blogs.

Test I: Timeout while connecting to a Blogger blog from Shanghai.

Test II: No response when a blogspot site was pinged from Shanghai, China

Test III: Blogspot Website could not be accessed from Beijing, China.

The International Olympic Committee recently asked China to open "Internet" during the duration of 2008 Olympics but with this restriction put on Blogger, it is pretty clear that the 30,000 journalists covering the Olympics event will have a hard time getting to their favorite websites and blogs while they are inside the "Great Firewall of China."

The news that Bloggers blogs are inaccessible in China was twittered by Carsten Ullrich, a researcher in Shanghai and got confirmed by Graham Webster, a journalist in Beijing.

If you plan to be in Beijing for the Olympic games, here's how to read Blogger Blogs inside China and access other restricted sites.