China Blocks LinkedIn Social Networking Site
By Ria Novosti
Chinese Internet users have lost access to professional networking site LinkedIn, which is designed to establish and maintain business contacts, The Financial Times reported on Friday.
Analysts say the Chinese authorities blocked LinkedIn to prevent the kind of public protests that have swept the Arab world from spreading to China. Social networking sites were used by activists in North African and Middle Eastern countries to organize the anti-government demonstrations the eventually toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.
Last Sunday, Shanghai police stopped the attempts of unauthorized actions in the heart of Chinese capital. Internet messages circulated over the Internet urged people to gather together and to demand for food, jobs, housing and justice.
Internet censorship in China is one of the strictest in the world, and Youtube, Twitter and Facebook have long been off-limits to local users. LinkedIn, which has just 90 million users worldwide and unlike Facebook does not support Chinese pages, had previously escaped the censors.
