I know we're supposed to be respectful of other cultures, but this is abhorrent to me: according to an email we got today, China has blocked LiveJournal to prevent bloggers from giving political commentary. We know this because the block coincides with the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing - the site has been blocked since Friday, according to the connectivity testing site GreatFirewallofChina.org. LiveJournal says that 8,692 Chinese bloggers have been blocked.
In fact, GreatFirewallofChina reinforces just how much information Chinese people are being denied access to: Wikipedia, Digg, Google.com, CNN, Xanga and many more. Of course, this post won't reach China, because the site says that Mashable.com is blocked, too (the site does claim to occasionally give false positives, however). Still, we can't do any further harm by saying that these blocks are ridiculous.
LiveJournal has been blocked before, according to SixApart, and access might be restored after the Congress meeting is over. But the consensus seems to be that China's censorship is getting much worse over time, not better.