Sitting in Qingdao at the FT Chinese annual forum, I am confronting at first hand the shift in the pattern of Chinese censorship towards social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

It is easy to access media sites such as the websites of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twittering or adding an entry to Facebook is, however, much harder.

Both Facebook and Twitter appear to be blocked by “the great firewall of China” so my efforts to sign on to my Twitter account have all failed.

That suggests that the Chinese authorities are now more worried about the social media than the mass media. In other words, what journalists have to say is less threatening than the spontaneous interactions of average citizens.

Although there is debate about how influential Twitter was in the protests in Iran earlier this year, some state authorities are clearly taking no chances.

Meanwhile, it seems easy enough to use Wordpress, the blogging software used by FT.com and, to judge by the advertisements thrown up on Google if you search for Twitter and Facebook, there are ways around the traffic blocks.

Several Chinese companies are offering VPN services to allow people to get through to Twitter and Facebook unimpeded. Censorship is a tricky challenge in such a rapidly developing and technologically sophisticated economy such as this.

November 18, 2009 3:03am in Media | Comment