Skip to main content

Banned in China

I was checking out a recent article by Marc Faber over at the Daily Reckoning's Australia site, when I glanced in the sidebar and noticed the title of one of their recent posts.

The title read, "The Daily Reckoning Has Been Banned in China", and it began with the following information:

We are sorry to inform you that if you are in China you will not be able to read this. We’ve recently learned that the Daily Reckoning Australia web site is banned in China.

They went on to reproduce a screenshot from a site called, Greatfirewallofchina.org, which claims to show a real-time test of web addresses censored in China. I decided to try the site for myself yesterday (and once more today) to see how it works.

Of the ten or twelve URLs I entered into their test bar, I'd say half were blocked and half were available. It was an interesting test; Wall St. Journal's web site was blocked, while The Financial Times home page sailed through with no problem.

The same pattern held for other similarly focused financial sites; Financial Sense Online was blocked while Safehaven.com was available. This is interesting, because the two sites are not only similarly styled, they even carry some of the exact same content from writers contributing to both sites (myself included).

So is it site content that prompts this web censoring, or is there something else that trips the censorship alarm on these blocked sites?

I decided to run the test for our site. It turns out Finance Trends Matter is blocked, so I decided to try a few other Blogger hosted blogs as well.

The other Blogger sites, including a value investing blog and a blog devoted to fashion (decadent!), seemed to be available, so we know it isn't strictly a problem with "blogspot" domain names. I see from the comments on Daily Reckoning's post that they tried this angle and found the same.

The test does not appear to be a definitive, last-word statement on which sites are blocked and which are available (they note that the "testing is only based on one server on one location in China"), but for now it appears we are "banned in D.C.", I mean China.

Note: If anyone is reading this site from China, please drop us a line and let us know. We'd love to know more about how you are accessing information over there. Thanks.

Popular posts from this blog

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Moneyball: How the Red Sox Win Championships

Welcome, readers . T o get the first look at brand new posts (like the following piece) and to receive our exclusive email list updates, please subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter .   The Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series title of t he 21st century this we ek. Having won their first Se ries in 86 years back in 200 4, the last decade-plus has marked a very strong return to form for one of baseball's oldest big league clubs. So how did they do it? Quick background: in late 2002, team own er and hedge fund manager, John W. Henry (with his partners ) bought the Boston Red Sox and its historic Fenway Park for a reported sum of $ 695 million. Henry and Co. quickly set out to find their ideal General Manager (GM) to help turn around their newly acquired, ailing ship. This brings us to one of my fav orite scenes from the 2011 film , Moneyball , in which John W. Henry (played by Ar liss Howard) attempts to woo Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pi