A comment on my blog from a Chinese reader revealed something interesting: MassGenomics is blocked in China. At first I took insult to this, and then also a bit of pride, that the content of this blog caught the interest of Chinese officials. I queried my liaison with the hosting company, Chris Clark of V-fluence, and here’s what he found out:

We confirmed your blog is being blocked in China (and India). At this point, we have no way of telling why your blog was blocked. It could be a keyword in your content was on a block list or more likely, because you have a blog. China has blocked Technorati and many other blog-related properties. At this point, without knowing the exact reason your blog was blocked, there really isn’t that much we can do. I would send a note to your reader asking him to try and keep up to date with your blog using an RSS reader, access your site through a proxy server or simply e-mail him your posts. Godaddy said there wasn’t much we could do.

So, no MassGenomics for China. Unfortunately, it seems that I’m not alone in censorship. My friends in the blogosphere dug into this issue. Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future wrote:

Turns out a lot (possibly the majority) of blogs are blocked as a matter of course by the Chinese. A bunch of the people on Sb have had their external blogs blocked for no particular reason.

Chris Clark referred me to an interesting page on Wikipedia – the Golden Shield Project. It seems that the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has spent ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars on a massive-scale censorship and surveillance project that limits and monitors internet access in China. It’s not just blogs that are blocked – sites deemed to be “subversive” by Chinese officials are walled off as well.

This begs the question – is it coincidence that my blog is blocked, or am I deemed a threat by the Chinese government? I admit I do tend to be a rabble-rouser. As David Dooling of PolITigenomics suggested, perhaps my misdeeds are finally catching up with me.