News has spread that China reportedly has cut access to You tube without any official explanation or even confirmation that it has indeed clocked the site.

It’s suspected that to be related to the recently uploaded videos of Chinese police beating Tibetan monks during last year’s uprising.

China’s silence on the access blockage is standard operating procedure, according to Usha C. V. Haley, an Asia fellow at Harvard Kennedy school, author of the forthcoming book, New Asian Emperors: The Business Strategies of the Overseas Chinese.

 

China is able to cut off access to certain sites because all Internet data in China is routed to central servers that it controls, said the Kennedy School’s Haley. China is not unique in blocking youtube: ”There are many countries in Asia and outside of Asia that have such controls over the Internet,” Haley pointed out.Turkey and Bangladesh have both blocked access to YouTube in the past, she noted.

Of course, there will be many ways for the tech savy chinese to get past this censorship. Proxies or cheap dailup. It remains to be seem how long the blockage will last.