BEIJING - CHINA said it has the right to block websites its says break its laws after being accused of restarting the practice it halted during the August Olympic Games as part of a promise to widen media freedom.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on Tuesday that certain websites had breached Chinese law by recognising 'two Chinas' - a reference to the self-ruled island Taiwan.
BBC complains of censorship
LONDON - THE British Broadcasting Corporation complained on Tuesday that Chinese authorities were blocking access to its Chinese language website.
The British broadcaster said Chinese residents had been able to access BBCChinese.com in the runup to the Beijing Olympics, but that it had now become more difficult to view the site.
Mr Liu, however, wouldn't say whether any websites had been censored.
'Undeniably, on some websites, there are some issues that go against Chinese law. For example, some websites are actually creating two countries - that is one China, one Taiwan. They treat Taiwan as an independent country, which is against our law of anti-secessionism,' he said during a regularly scheduled press conference, without naming the organisations.
Beijing still claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island and has repeatedly warned any attempt at a permanent split could trigger a devastating conflict.
The British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that China appears to have banned a number of foreign websites recently, including its Chinese language news site and Voice of America in Chinese.
The sites had been unblocked after journalists attending the Beijing Olympics complained that the government was censoring sites deemed sensitive, the BBC said on its website.
China routinely blocks websites that contain sensitive topics such as Tibet or its spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. However, during the August Olympics Beijing opened up access to sites typically banned in order to appease the international community.
The Committee to Protect Journalists blasted Chinese authorities for apparently returning to media restrictions.
'It's clear that China has no intention of fulfilling the hopes it raised when it was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games that the Chinese media universe would enter a period of expansion,' said Mr Bob Dietz, the group's Asia programme coordinator, in a statement.
'Instead, all we have seen is a continuation of the same narrow policies of official resistance and restriction of foreign and local media,' he said.
China - with the largest number of Internet users in the world, more than 250 million - has put in place a sophisticated system to police websites for sensitive material. -- AP
