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In preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4th, China has started to block a number of web sites, including Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Hotmail, and Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. Tech-savvy Internet users in China, of course, know how to circumvent the Great Firewall, but for the large majority of Chinese Internet users, these sites will remain blocked for the foreseeable future. In addition to these high-profile sites, the Guardian also reports that the Great Firewall now also blocks access to more than 6,000 online forums affiliated with colleges and universities.

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In March, China also blocked access to Google’s YouTube. As the Chinese government does not seem to release a list of blocked sites, it is hard to find an exact number for how many sites are currently blocked, though there are a number of tools that allow you to check whether a given site has been blocked. The last time the Great Firewall made the news was in the run-up to the Olympics, where Western reporters were supposed to have full access to the Internet, but found that some sites were still blocked.

Sadly, there is also some evidence that while the Chinese government is still keenly aware of the events of June 4th 1989, a large number of young Chinese know very little about the event.

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