China blocks 23 per cent of 215 accredited foreign news sites, watchdog says

China’s “Great Firewall” system of online censorship blocks domestic access to nearly a quarter of the foreign news organisations accredited to report in the country, a press watchdog said on Tuesday.

Beijing bars its citizens from accessing the publicly available websites of 23 per cent of 215 international news organisations that have journalists based in China, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said in a statement.

Thirty-one per cent of news organisations that publish primarily in English, the most widely spoken foreign language in China, are blocked, it said.

The statement did not give absolute numbers but said the percentages were determined via an analysis by the press club and GreatFire.org, which tracks Chinese online censorship.

It was released on the final day of the sixth annual World Internet Conference in the east China city of Wuzhen, which the ruling Communist Party uses to further its argument that governments should be able to police their own online turf.

“China’s internet controls have been used to block a growing list of global news sources,” the FCCC said.

“Those digital blocks run counter to the ethos of internet openness, and prevent Chinese access to valuable sources of independent reporting on international matters, as well as China’s own domestic affairs.”

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The blocked sites include the BBC, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper and many others, it said.

According to the government, 536 foreign journalists have accreditation to report in China, the statement said.

The so-called Great Firewall is considered the world’s biggest and most sophisticated censorship apparatus. It blocks a slew of foreign sites including Facebook and Twitter, and Google shut down its search engine in China in 2010, refusing Beijing’s requirement to censor search results.