China, which normally maintains a stringent watch over the media, has lifted the ban over the popular English-language version of online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Politically sensitive issues like Tibet and Tiananmen Square, nonetheless, still cannot be accessed even on the English version of Wikipedia. People in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed this stating that they can now view the popular website Wikipedia in English, but its Chinese version is still off limits.

 

The Chinese government is normally known to block or censor popular websites and forums that can give rise to dissent. China’s decision, therefore, to lift the ban off English Wikipedia is the fallout of the recommendation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) inspectors. The IOC inspectors have told China to open the Internet for the duration of the 2008 Olympics, highlighting the fact that blocking it ‘would reflect very poorly’ on the host country.

 

So while searches of topics like ‘Johann Sebastian Bach’ and ‘dim sum’ cropped up English-language articles, use of sensitive words like Tibet met with a message that the browser was unable to connect to the Internet. Flickr, the Yahoo’s photo sharing network and Wikipedia have been occasionally blocked before in China, while YouTube operated by Google is often blocked during high-level political events in China.