China’s internet users have been growing rapidly in the recent years. Nearly 91 percent of China’s Internet users are surfing the Web with a broadband connection – an increase of 100 million from 2007. Mobile phone Internet users totaled 118 million by the end of 2008.

As such, the China government can be pretty tight on the sites that users can visit. Even Google and Baidu was banned, as they claimed the search engine is responsible for the spread of pornographic content.

According to Webupon, the Chinese government has had the Golden Shield Project since 1998 to protect citizens from

• Pornography
• Anti-social opinions and activities
• Ideas, organizations and opinions which are a threat to national security
• Ideas, organizations and opinions which undermine the government’s policies on religion or are seen as subversive

Here’re two sites that you can test to see if your blog is being blocked in China:
1. WebSitePulse and
2. Great Firewall of China

And here’s very useful piece of presentation about “Censorship by Chinese Blog-hosting Companies“.

Apparently, my blog is not banned. But a friend in Shanghai said she couldn’t read my blog from there. I wonder what’s wrong? What about your blog?