China To Netizens: Shut Up

As the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approaches, China is cracking down on the Internet in an apparent effort to prevent it from being used to organize crowds or even to discuss the extremely sensitive anniversary.

China's Internet watchdogs patrol the net 24/7. But China is stepping up its level of surveillance, blocking access to various sites, and browbeating local governments to be on the lookout for troublemakers who might use the web to schedule public protests.

In Pictures: The World's Fastest-Changing Markets

How To Put The Internet In Orbit

Finding Google

Is Your City Safe From The Tech Bust?

Managing Your Online Identity

Two days before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, China blocked instant message platform twitter.com, email provider Hotmail, and photo sharing web site Flickr.com, forcing many of China's 300 million netizens to shut up.

Two decades ago this week, after an internal power struggle, Communist Party rulers ordered the army to end a peaceful student protest calling for democracy. While there were protests nationwide, the most famous was centered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Tanks moved in and the Chinese army began shooting Chinese students. Doctors and human rights experts estimated thousands were killed.

Beijing apparently fears the 20th anniversary would be used as an occasion to question the Communist Party's legitimacy. Various groups of netizens have already posted their requests on the Internet for a reevaluation of the June 4 movement. On social networking web site Facebook, discussion groups such as "Netizen Gathering For 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre," and "Tiananmen Square Massacre" have already gathered thousands of members criticizing Beijing's bloody suppression of the students twenty years ago.

In the latest internet crackdown, China blocked twitter.com on Tuesday afternoon, preventing the rising population of tweeters in China from sharing what they are doing and thinking through the newest web-based text message service that allows users to post updates -- called 'tweets' -- of no more than 140 characters.

Photo sharing site Flickr, run by Yahoo!, is also suddenly unavailable in China so there will be no pictures of the army crackdown on peaceful protestors in Chinese streets two decades ago. China's Internet users are no long able to open email accounts provided by Microsoft's Hotmail, and are not allowed to dig out what is happening through Microsoft's new search engine Bing.com.

Microsoft confirmed the blockage in China and is "reaching out to the (Chinese) government to understand this decision and find a way to move forward," said spokesman Kevin Kutz.

"The Internet is currently rather creaky here, with all the usual filtering tools turned up to top level, but Chinese netizens were openly trading the PDF (digital edition) of the banned Zhao Ziyang's memoirs through Twitter and its Chinese clones until yesterday, when Twitter was blocked," said Jeremy Goldkorn, publisher and editor of Danwei Media.

As the June 4 anniversary approaches, the one-party communist government in Beijing is apparently worried about the rising influence of Chinese netizens.

Beijing has been strengthening its already strong online censorship. Internet watchdogs have shut down ychqw.com, the web site of famed political magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu, on May 22 without any warning or explanation.