Last week, the International Olympic Committee caved into China’s backtracking on the issue of online censorship for foreign journalists during the summer Olympics. This was seen as a disappointing and, to some, infuriating move by the Chinese government.
There appears to be a lot of fluidity to the government’s actions, as banned sites change on a daily basis according to some. The government has also unblocked some sites that were originally blocked after last week’s announcement.
Regardless of what the Chinese government decides on doing with regards to censorship of the Internet, there are many tools available to journalists and other foreign (and even native) attendees to the Olympics this summer.
Some are provided by the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC), which says that about 1 million Chinese users utilize their tools to gain unfettered access to the Web.
Once again, Internet censorship in China has taken a major share of the spotlight that would usually be given primarily to the games themselves.
Sources:</strong
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cnet/20080802/tc_cnet/8301102331000539093;_ylt=Aqe1GOxkq9Z1QVRdkUVfXIX6VbIF