From Shanghaiist:
As many of you would know by now, Youtube has been blocked in China. Looks like we got happy too soon about the unblocking of Blogspot.Danwei asks if the block has come as a result of the ongoing 17th Party Congress. Well, Marc van der Chijs, founder of the Shanghai-based Tudou.com , doesn’t think so:
The reason? Probably not directly the ongoing 17th National Congress in Beijing, then they would have blocked the site last week already (unless someone right now uploaded some video’s that would upset the government). I suspect the real reason might be that YouTube just launched a Chinese version, which would make the site much more accessible for Chinese users. Not a very smart idea to do that in the middle of the National Congress, and I am surprised nobody at mother company Google’s China offices rang an alarm bell about this before the launch. A typical example of the mistakes foreign companies make while trying to do business in China. [Full Text]
See also: YouTube Opens Taiwan Site from AP via TBO.com.
[Image: Google’s Video page from Shanghaiist.]
