A small selection of people in China will finally be able to use banned sites including Facebook, Twitter and other 'politically sensitive' links. The ban was placed on the sites in 2009 after riots in the country and China's ruling Communist Party has restricted access ever since. Yet, people living and working in a new free-trade zone in Shanghai - which covers just 17-square-miles - will be allowed to
visit these sites soon, according to reports in the South Chin.
China's Communist Party censors the internet, routinely deleting online postings and blocking access to websites it thinks inappropriate or politically sensitive. Facebook and Twitter were blocked because the authorities believed that the deadly riots in the western province of Xinjiang were supported by these social networking sites. The New York Times had also been blocked since reporting that the
family of then-Premier Wen Jiabao had collected a huge fortune.
South China Morning Post quoted a government source as saying the idea of unblocking websites in the Free Trade Zone is to make foreigners 'feel like at home'. 'If they can't get onto Facebook or read The New York Times, they may naturally wonder how special the free-trade zone is compared with the rest of China,' the source added.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that making Facebook available in China is in keeping with his company's goal of connecting the world. Earlier this month, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg met with the head of China's State Council Information Office during a visit to Beijing. The pair discussed Facebook's importance as Chinese enterprises continue to expand abroad and various cooperation matters around that.
Twitter will also benefit by being available in China, the world's largest Internet market by users. Still, many Chinese Web users already use similar services, such as Sina Corp's Weibo. China's three biggest telecoms companies - China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom - had been informed of the decision to allow foreign competition in the Free Trade Zone, but they had not raised complaints because they knew the decision had been endorsed by Chinese leadership, who has backed the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. 【題組】26. What is this passage mainly about?
(A) A change of policy in China (B) The creation of a free-trade zone
(C) The reason behind the deadly riots (D) The competition between Facebook and Twitter
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