Josh of the Far West China blog has written a short piece for the BBC on the current situation with Internet access in Xinjiang, where he lives:
Finally state media hailed the return of Sohu and Sina, two of China’s most popular news portals, but the sites have been completely censored – they are unrecognisable save the logo.
If you access these sites from Xinjiang, there are no adverts, you can’t log on, email or access the forums. The search function is also unavailable, as is the possibility of changing language. The whole layout looks different – we’re behind a firewall within China’s great firewall.
People doing business at an international or even national level have been severely inconvenienced. But most people have resigned themselves to this situation.
People hold out some hope that someday everything will return to the way it was, but the government has given us no timetable.
