Amazon: Blocked, Or Not, in China?

Figuring out when Web sites have been blocked by governments is an imprecise science.
Take, for example, Wednesday, when some Chinese Internet users began reporting an inability to access Amazon.com (AMZN), the U.S. Web site for the online retail giant. Yet Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said that “nothing happened.”

To back up the claim in blog posts and Twitter discussions, Chinese Internet users and watchers pointed to Herdict Web, a four-month-old system run by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, which aggregates reports of Web site accessibility into one database. On Wednesday, 12 reports on Herdict claimed Amazon.com was inaccessible in China, and as of the time of this posting three claim it is back up. The reports came from users all over the country, including people whose Internet service providers are in Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Ningbo and Tianjin.

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