Hat tip to Brad Delong, for noticing this news from the weblog Rconversation:
Asiapundit first sounded the alarm. Now it's confirmed. All Typepad blogs, including this one, cannot be seen in China. (Note that Blogger has been blocked in China for some time.)
Thus we have proof positive that the Chinese century is not quite at hand. Although Brad doesn't emphasize it, the Rconversation post also includes some observations about corporate responsibilities in dealing with countries that do not quite conform to modern assumptions about freedom of expression:
The Chinese government is mainly to blame for this, but it's important to consider the way in which U.S. technology is being used to stifle free speech in China - and the extent to which U.S. companies are responsible for this usage. This includes not only Microsoft, but also Cisco Systems and others. Here is what Reporters Without Borders had to say about Cisco's complicity in a recent report:
The architecture of the Chinese Internet was designed from the outset to allow information control...
As this excellent article on the issue points out, Cisco denies direct complicity. There is also an argument to be made that the existence of Cisco routers in China on the whole has done more to facilitate free speech than to stifle it.
It's a complicated issue.
Indeed it is. But what seems to clear to me is that the inherent tensions between free-market economic policies and command-and-control political institutions will arise in China sooner rather than later. If the latter prevails, it is hard to see a China that continues to progress at anywhere near the pace of which we have become accustomed.