Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin of the Balkinization blog tests to see which legal blogs can be accessed in China and which are filtered out by the government's censorship technology. He finds little consistency in the pattern:
[A] law student who picked me up at the airport explained to me that he had heard of Balkinization in China but that, at least in Chengdu, the site was blocked. When I got to the hotel I checked and sure enough, he was right...
For amusement, I also tried to see if I could reach a number of other prominent law and law professor blogs. I was able to reach Volokh Conspiracy, SCOTUSBlog, How Appealing, Election Law, Instapundit, Mirror of Justice, Concurring Opinions, Becker-Posner, PrawfsBlawg, Feminist Law Professors, Business Associations Blog, Lessig Blog, and Black Prof. I was not able to reach Balkinization, Althouse, U Chicago, Leiter Law School and The Conglomerate.
There is almost no reason to believe that, from the standpoint of the Chinese government, Balkinization is more subversive than Volokh Conspiracy or Becker Posner, or a number of other blogs on this list. It is likely that, as with most Internet filtering schemes, the results are some combination of overblocking technology, arbitrary decisionmaking, and simple luck of the draw.
I'm glad to see that the VC is available in China. However, that may be because the government's censors haven't gotten around to reading my highly critical post about Chinese land seizures - a pattern of violation of property rights that makes Kelo seem like a walk in the park by comparison.
It's especially sad though, that Chinese intellectuals, even those that would defend their state's policies are crippled in their ability to engage in these sorts of global discussions, crippled by those very policies.
From what I have observed, if a blog is hosted on a generic blogging service, Blogger, say, the Great Firewall of China blocks it, because it blocks everything Blogger.
However, all the self hosted sites (such as Volokh) I have ever tried to access come through unimpaired.
My English-language blog on Chinese law (Chinese Law Prof Blog) is blocked, but of course they never tell you why. In some cases it's almost random; remember that the people who do this have to justify their existence. Trying to figure out what you did wrong is a mug's game.
First of them is that I am not a lawyer, I have never been to China, and I am not terribly well educated (FSVO "educated").
Another is that in the small amount of travel (real and virtual, and within "virtual" via reading, via listening, and via the several forms of electronic correspondence) I have found that USAians who think English is not important simply are not thinking the thing through. English is the Lingua Franca of both the world and the Internet.
I have corresponded (in near-real time) with people in China and I an convinced that the censorship is both real, and leaky. The same thing that makes spam so hard to control (in addition to the courts of Fargo, North Dakota and the like) is the complexity of the Internet and its constituent Internets. Furthermore, I suspect that besides the source (as an important classifier), the recipient is. (Things at a hotel frequented by foreigners may be filtered differently from things in one neighborhood or another. (Have you ever tested for reachability at a public library here? In the PRB? The dorms at your University?)
Honestly, I'm not impressed if a person writing a blog on Chinese law isn't aware already that he is blocked because he is hosted on Typepad (http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/china_law_prof_blog/) which is blocked in its entirety.
Anyway, I am happy to enlighten you on why you are blocked.
Someone in the Chinese Government has some taste?
I think its a mistake to think that China has not disapproved of a blog simply because it hasn't blocked it yet.
Truthfulness. Compassion. Forbearance.
:-)
Nick
Here are two proxy servers that will get you to any Blogger-hosted blog:
http://pkblogs.com
http://www.inblog.net
Thanks -- I'll give them a try Wednesday.