If you’re chained to your desk in the U.S. and need a distraction, you can take your pick. Check out the latest crazy wedding dance on YouTube. Surf over to your favorite food blog to get a good recipe for tonight’s dinner. Maybe you’ll even get lucky and have a friend’s trip pics to check out on Picasa. And, of course, there is always the irritatingly omnipresent status updates on Facebook and Twitter.
In China, though, we have very few of these Internet diversions left.
If you look at the Web sites blocked in China, – a list that includes YouTube, Twitter, Picasa, WordPress, Blogspot, and Facebook – that’s a lot of time-sucking sites we can’t access. In the past years, one by one, all of our favorite time wasters have been tackled by “The Great Firewall.” (a search which, fittingly, is blocked here.)
So, what are the Chinese workers doing with all this extra time? They’re growing their GDP 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter of this year.
China is known for blocking and unblocking Web sites depending on the political climate and the censors’ whims.
And, it turns out, not surprisingly, all that blocking is having an effect. A recent report revealed that the number of Facebook users in China has taken a massive nosedive. The site had about 1 million users in China as of this summer, but, thanks to a country-wide block, there are only 14,000 left – those of us desperate enough for distractions that we’re willing to pay for a proxy.
Kellie Schmitt
Schmitt is a Shanghai-based writer who has been published in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist’s Business China, L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly, and Backpacker. She also writes Shanghai features for CNNgo, a new travel and lifestyle Web site. Driven by her love of good food, ...
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Dave says:
Imagine workers actually working at work instead of playing on facebook!
Chinese Currentsc says:
At least Flickr survives (although, worryingly, is has been on and off this morning - perhaps an indication that Mother is not best pleased with some recent postings).
You may be interested in an article I wrote about this year's blocking frenzy, which I published on my website: www.ChineseCurrents.com (scroll down to "Watch with Mother", 8th August 2009).
Best regards from a snow-covered Beijing (they went a bit over the top with the cloud seeding I reckon).