By Star Chang, posted Feb 23, 2011 at 11:03 AM, 355 views,

Chinese Internet Sites Block Searches for Hillary Clinton (video)

It is really ironic that the Chinese government is always blocking every online discussion about Internet freedom! Chinese Internet sites have recently decided to remove discussion of Secretary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech from their websites. Sina Microblog, a Twitter-like service in China, has blocked searches for the Chinese words “Hillary Clinton” or “Hillary”, just a day after the U.S. Secretary of State gave a speech urging governments to end Internet censorship… Video after the break.

During the speech, Clinton said that countries such as China would face long-term economic and social costs that would lead to civil unrest if their censorship of the Internet continues. The Chinese netizens start to discuss about Clinton’s speech using their local Chinese microblogs. But it appears that the posts were quickly taken down by Chinese government censors. The microblogging site will only response : “In accordance with the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search result did not display … “

China has been restrictive on news and information released on politic and sensitive topic, in order to prevent civil unrest from occurring in the country. Recently, the Chinese word “Egypt” has also been censored due to the anti-government protests in the Middle East. China currently has the world’s largest Internet population, but the country has invested heavily in censoring the Web for sensitive content or even blocking the whole entire sites. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Picasa Web Albums were all blocked by the Chinese government since 2009 and at present, these sites still remain blocked.

Source: Yahoo News, NTDTV