During the Olympic Games in Beijing, 2008, journalists faced countless problems transmitting information back to their home base. The Chinese Government kept their extreme censoring policy all throughout the games, although they had previously promised that the foreign journalists would have full access to any Internet resort they might have needed. Fewer restrictions would have backed up China’s own advertisement as a more open county, yet the reality confirmed its police state apparel.

Chinese citizens and visitors suffer from severe Internet censorship. Websites that publish negative views on China cannot be viewed by the Chinese. The restrictions also apply to sites that link to the Dalai Lama, to the Falun Gong spiritual practices, websites that do not moderate social and political opinions, websites that show pornography, violence or that comment on criminal activity, Marxist and Democratic websites, pages that contain information on Chinese Communism, Hong Kong’s Yahoo, Voice of America and BBC News. These are just a few of the banned websites and content topics.

Recently, Canadian researchers discovered that the Chinese Police and Government also closely monitor text messages and conversations carried out on Tom-Skype, the Chinese Skype. The service is provided by the collaboration of Skype and its owner, eBay, with a Chinese wireless operator. Eight computers are used to log in conversations and messages, an operation discovered last month by the Canadians. Upon a quick view, they concluded the computers hold over one million censored messages, a practice considered impossible and illegal, considering Skype’s Privacy policy.

New censored words were come across during the investigation. “Earthquake” is one of them, after China was criticized worldwide for its poor emergency situation management. Another is “milk”, following the scandal involving Chinese tainted milk. Kraft Foods, Cadbury and Mars all found traces of melamine in some of their Chinese-made products and recalled them from different markets around the world, such as Australia and Indonesia. The tainted milk hospitalized hundreds of thousands of children and four have been reported dead.