Chinese state media squashes claims of less restricted internet in Shanghai zone (updated)

A few days ago, the South China Morning Post claimed that blocks put on websites like Twitter, Facebook and The New York Times were to be lifted in Shanghai's new free-trade zone. And the justification made sense, too: relax restrictions to make visitors happy, and potentially cash in on accelerated foreign investment as a result. Plausible, sure, but according to state-run news outlet the People's Daily, completely untrue. As it turns out, the Chinese powers that be allegedly have no intention of allowing web traffic in the free-trade zone to circumvent the Great Firewall, which means visiting Twitter addicts will still have to turn to Weibo for their social network / microblogging fix.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Update: People.com.cn (not the People's Daily, as reported earlier) has since pulled its post. There's no explanation as to why.

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Via: The Register

Source: TechWeb (Chinese)