Interfax (www.interfax.com) announced on November 29 that the English version of Google's news service has been inaccessible in China for more than a week. Zhang Junwei, a Google Media official stationed in Beijing, acknowledged that the company's English News channel was inaccessible when contacted by Interfax, but could not provide further comment. The Google English News channel, which monitors more than 4500 online news outlets, has become a popular resource for Chinese netizens searching for information from around the world.
Although Google's English News channel is presently inaccessible in China, the search engine's Chinese language News channel, which does not display results from websites banned by the Chinese government, was up and running as normal. As of November 29, Interfax was still unable to access the home page of Google's English News through normal IP services, but was able to visit the site through proxy servers, suggesting that it may have been blocked by the authorities. The Chinese government blocked Google's News channel in September 2002 as well.
