BBC and VOA Web sites banned in China

In response to reports today that the BBC’s Chinese language news site and Voice of America in Chinese have been banned in China, we issued this statement.

“It’s clear that China has no intention of fulfilling the hopes it raised when it was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games that the Chinese media universe would enter a period of expansion. Instead, all we have seen is a continuation of the same narrow policies of official resistance and restriction of foreign and local media,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator.