The Great Firewall of China blocks off Wikipedia
And it's not because of students cheating on research papers.
Wikipedia
China is known for its censorship of certain websites. The country went the extra mile by blocking Wikipedia in April.
Multiple reports confirm China blocked Wikipedia across all language URLs sometime in late April. The country is using DNS injections to prevent its citizens from accessing the online encyclopedia, according to a report from the Open Observatory of Network Interference on May 4.
"In late April, the Wikimedia Foundation determined that Wikipedia was no longer accessible in China," Samantha Lien, communications manager for the Wikipedia Foundation, said in an email Wednesday. "After closely analyzing our internal traffic reports, we can confirm that Wikipedia is currently blocked across all language versions."
So far, there's no explanation provided as to why China is blocking Wikipedia. In May 2017, the country did put forth plans for making its own online encyclopedia with more than 300,000 articles from 20,000 scholars.
China is not the first country to do a complete ban of Wikipedia. Turkey has the site blocked since April 2017, and several other countries, like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, blocked the site for a period of time.
The Chinese Embassy didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Originally published May 13, 10:12 a.m. PT.
Update, May 14: Adds quote from Wikipedia.
