Nearly six months after gruesome ethnic rioting on the western frontier of Xinjiang, Chinese authorities gingerly began to lift an Internet blackout on Tuesday, allowing partial access to a pair of official news sites.
The Xinjiang regional government said it also planned to restore other Web sites and services, cellphone text messaging and international telephone connections “later, based on the relevant situation, step by step,” an official statement said.
For now, though, people in Xinjiang can visit the sites of Xinhua and the People’s Daily.
However, even on those reliably policed sites, the region’s Web users were still barred from engaging in e-mail, blogging or forums.
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