Chinese authorities have blocked the search engines of two of the country's most popular web portals as part of their efforts to censor the Internet, staff at one of the companies said yesterday.
The search engines at Sina.com (新浪) and Sohu.com (搜狐) have been shut down since noon on Monday. Searches conducted yesterday brought up messages saying the sites were undergoing upgrades.
China has for years been waging an online battle to censor the Internet of pornographic and violent content, and to seek to stifle political and religious material that it believes could spark social unrest.
"As of yesterday noon, all the databases have been in a state of closure because relevant government Internet supervision departments were censoring our databases," a member of customer service staff at Sina.com told reporters.
"It affects not just Sina, but Sohu as well, so our search engines are not in use," said the staff member, declining to give her name.
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