internet - Beijing unplugs nationalistic website


A two-year old nationalistic website had been unplugged after it refused to close down voluntarily on the request of the Beijing Municipal Informaton Office, the (unlinkable) Asian Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The Patriot's Alliance Web launched on Sunday a petition against a decision to award Japanese companies contracts to upgrade the Chinese railway system. In March the website got even international prominence as it campaigned against similar proposals.
Unlike other site of a political nature, this kind of nationalistic movements have never been targetted by the authorities, suggesting its often anti-Japanese attacks had silent governmental approval. But the waves of anger hitting the internet focused increasingly also on the government, and often the government was forced to act to calm the sentiments, for example when last year a Japanese company organized a sex orgy in southern Zhuhai.
It is a second internet policy change, after earlier a 'People's war against Pornography' took off.