M A C V A Y S I A

So here I am, having to use a proxy to get to my own blog from China, thinking the government has blocked access to my domain for whatever reason. And I keep trying to think of the exact reason they might have done that, a reason which up to this point still eludes me. However, I’ve been reading some interesting things about blogs being blocked by China, and my reading has shed a little light on my plight.

I found a really cool blog written by an expat in Shanghai, one I’ll write more about later. I sent him an e-mail asking why I’m blocked and he’s not. Silly question, I know, but our blogs aren’t too different as far as I can see, except that he knows way more about China than I do and knows more about the language than I ever will. After sending the e-mail I noticed he’s had similar questions about why some sites are blocked and others aren’t. One of the comments to that post mentions GoDaddy, which just happens to be the hosting provider I use for my site. I did some more digging and came up with some very interesting information.

It seems I might not be blocked by the Chinese government at all, but by my hosting provider back in the good old USA:

…GoDaddy.com now routinely blocks both email and HTTP requests from China, leaving many foreigners who live in China but host their websites with GoDaddy with frustrating connection issues. (from China Tech News)

Now I’m not really sure about this, because I signed up for hosting with that company a couple of months ago but was only unable to access my blog last Friday. But it’s certainly an interesting twist. If it’s true, it would be quite ironic: an American company thinks it can combat censorship of the Internet in China by making it difficult for me to see and use my blog while in China.

I guess I won’t make any comments about how utterly silly that is until I find out for sure who’s actually blocking my site.