[photopress:Wikipedia.gif,full,alignright]The Chinese-language version of the online encyclopedia can now be accessed in China after Beijing authorities fully lifted its ban on the site on November 13.
China began increasing access to the English-language version a month ago, but the Chinese version has been blocked since last year. Reporters Without Borders who confirmed the lifted ban had the following to say:
“While Yahoo, Google and Microsoft harp on about how it is impossible to negotiate with the authorities and that if they refused to censor their search engines, they would be expelled from the country, the Wikipedia example proves the contrary.”
“The Chinese government is pragmatic and does not want to do without foreign business in the Internet sector. There is therefore obviously room for negotiation for the US companies.”
Baidu.com, China’s main search engine, started an online search engine modeled on Wikipedia a few months ago, called “Baidupedia”. Very original. The same cannot be said for the content, however, which is censored by the Chinese government.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald