Access to the networking site LinkedIn was disrupted in China on Thursday, following online calls on other sites for gatherings inspired by protests against authoritarian regimes across the Middle East. It was not immediately clear whether the blockage on domestic Chinese Internet lines of LinkedIn, one of the few foreign networking sites not previously blocked by Beijing, was due to state censorship.
LinkedIn - which recently surpassed one million users in China - said it was aware that access to its service was blocked for some of its users in the region, but declined to specify the source of the blocking. "We are looking into the situation now," a spokesman said. The disruption, however, comes in the wake of a rash of detentions in China after an overseas Chinese-language website, Boxun, spread a call for "Jasmine Revolution" gatherings to press the Communist Party to make way to democratic change.
Attempted demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere on Sunday were tiny and swiftly extinguished by swarms of police. A rash of detentions and censorship of online discussion of the Middle Eastern protests suggests Beijing remains nonetheless nervous about any signs of opposition to one-party rule.